


and tell me how it ends (i'd do it all again)

by andawaywego, hearden



Category: Power Rangers, Power Rangers (2017)
Genre: Collaboration, F/F, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-09-26
Packaged: 2019-07-17 14:40:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16097732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andawaywego/pseuds/andawaywego, https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearden/pseuds/hearden
Summary: "It’s a beautiful afternoon. Not a cloud in the sky. At some point, Trini’s playlist started over and she can just hear it from where the volume is lowered so that they can hear the boys. Trini’s hand is warm when she lifts it, rests it on Kimberly’s shoulder.Trini laughs, shakes her head. Kimberly smiles. Grips the steering wheel.Keeps driving."[or: a trimberly road trip collab fic between andawaywego and hearden in alternating perspectives.]





	and tell me how it ends (i'd do it all again)

**Author's Note:**

> ryan (hearden) is the only person who could make me eat my own words and write one last fic. love you lots, ryan. thanks for this amazing ride. words don’t do how amazing you are justice. 
> 
> enjoy, guys. 
> 
> -andawaywego
> 
> \--
> 
> whew, okay, so -- ryan (hearden) here -- this is probably one of the most ambitious projects i've ever done, and it literally was birthed out of me sending andy an ask, andy saying she'd wanna collab with me, and then... and then this. and i love this, god, i love this so, so much. i feel like a part of myself went out with this fic, moreso and differently than anything else i've ever posted. because this IS different than anything else i've ever posted. it's my first collab fic that i was never prepared to work on and write, but i'm so glad it did. my heart has gone from california to texas with these girls, even though i've spent the past month at home or school, and all of that is thanks to andy, who is not just a wonderful writer but an amazing, cool, and brilliant friend. our friendship has been life-changing for me, and this fic has been, too.
> 
> and andy. it was such an honor to be writing this collab with you and the honor and pleasure of your last fic being trimberly and a joint project with me? i can't speak to how that makes me feel. you're such an inspiration in all ways to me, most of all how your words have never failed to make me feel to my core. i've said this before but you're gonna do great things. you're gonna take the world by storm with your words that create beautiful things after beautiful things because you've got that power inside of you. thank you for sharing it with all of us in fandom.
> 
> you meme a lot to me, you dork.
> 
> and i hope you all enjoy!
> 
> \--
> 
>  **warnings:** mentions of anxiety, depression, trichotillomania, and mental illness (which is being left vague for spoilers).

It's one whole miracle that Trini gets out of high school all in one piece. She crosses the stage at graduation, feeling utterly small as she takes her fake diploma and intensely disliking how ugly baby blue is as a color for a cap and gown but at least it's not something more atrocious like… well, maybe she just wishes all high schools used black, too. The miracle, however, as she gets yanked into a group picture with Jason, Billy, Zack, and Kimberly, taking care to stand on Jason's left as Kimberly takes Jason's right -- half because it evens out the picture and half just because -- is not that she's graduated, that _they've_ all graduated after basically half of the town has been destroyed.

The miracle is that she even got there in the first place, on that cliff, a yellow power coin burning an odd, eerie hole in her pocket, after Billy blew up an entire cliffside with homemade explosives. Sometimes she worries about him.

The reminder that she's alive to see high school graduation slips her mind for the first few weeks, months, even, after the fact has happened. She forgets between hanging out with Zack in the quarry together and introducing him to a meditation app she has downloaded on her phone and chooses a quick ten-minute mindfulness exercise for him to try out, but he can't even get through that without impatiently jiggling his leg a million miles an hour. At the end of that afternoon, she just gives up and calls him a hopeless cause. Then, in return, he introduces her to something _he_ likes.

The next day at training, Jason asks why Zack has a bruise on his arm when he takes off his jacket to spar. Zack flashes a glance at Trini then quickly mumbles, "Nothing," and chooses to be paired with Billy for the first match.

So, train surfing definitely isn't her thing.

She prefers existing quietly, anyway, and Billy is a perfect companion for that. Admittedly, the first time Billy had tapped on her window, Trini had almost had a heart attack because he's so tall, but once she got over it, spending time with him became one of her favorite things to do over the summer. He always brings something to work on when he comes over -- a new project or invention something or other -- and tinkers with it, which slightly concerns her. She's not worried that he's brought a bomb into her bedroom because she trusts him, but at the same time, he did land himself in detention for his lunch box exploding.

Trini tries to watch things on her computer when he visits or anything productive, but every time, without fail, her mind collapses into a void of static buzzing and she just stares blankly at her laptop until Billy says he's got to get home for dinner and that the evening was fun. Every time, she gives him a brief nod goodbye and lets him leave before releasing the longest sigh of relief she's ever had. It gets heavier as the summer goes on.

At the beginning of summer, Trini deletes all of her social media except for SnapChat because Kimberly has a streak going on with her, and the thought crosses her mind of asking if it's okay for them to drop the streak because of-- And then her thoughts don't go any further than that because the idea of asking Kimberly to give up a streak, the anxiety that would invade her mind leading up to that conversation, and the realization that she has no real excuse to offer sends her spiraling into a panic attack that ends with her crying in the shower. So, she deletes everything else, keeps SnapChat, and watches the numbers next to the fire emoji turn into a yellow then a pink heart.

She feels like Jason might know when she feels his eyes on her a few days after and almost panics when he calls out, "Hey, guys," right in the middle of winding down after training, and the sweat on the back of her neck turns to ice.

But, then, instead of saying that he's noticed that she's falling apart, Jason just asks if they want to see Spider-Man: Homecoming later that weekend. Trini looks down at her palms as she leaves the ship after agreeing on a time and date that works for everyone else, and there's tiny crescent shapes where her nails had dug into the skin.

The thing is that she doesn't even know why everything had gotten worse after graduation because it doesn't quite make sense. Life is fine, life is good, her grades were, well, good. It turns her insides to only think of everything as a vague blanket of good, which, of course, leads to her staring at Wikipedia two hours later when she's in bed that night, having gone off on a tangent of clicking link after link when all she'd started with was looking for synonyms for _good._

Everything is fine -- one synonym -- and she gets along with the team particularly well -- there's another. Trini would consider the other four her best friends because she doesn't exactly have too many other friends, especially not those who live in the same state, but she's not entirely close with them. It hadn't happened overnight that she's come to connect with the other Rangers. Of course, Trini had meant it when she said she'd give her life for them -- she wouldn't have said it if she hadn't -- but there's a difference between that and giving them everything while she's still alive.

She's simultaneously the most and least close to Kimberly, which is as confusing as it'll ever get for her, hopefully. Being the only two girls on the team just naturally means that, even if she has more, ideally, in common with Billy, not that he knows because she's shared a total of ten words with him any time he's in her room. Trini knows about the looks, though, and the feeling in the air and their SnapChat streak, and the worst thing is she knows nothing about how to feel about any of it.

.

It's a slow realization, Kimberly thinks, of just how much things are changing. How different her life is now, how much stranger and weirder and better than it was in October, when she'd been directionless and guideless and friendless and then Billy Cranston blew up a mountain and everything changed.

For one:

They graduate.

All five of them. Even Zack, by some strange miracle that they all decided not to question.

They graduate high school.

Somehow, that's a real thing that happens. Kimberly knows that it is because she puts on a baby blue, polyester gown and sits on an uncomfortable white chair in the football field. She bakes for an hour and a half under the hot June sun three rows behind Billy and then her name is called and she crosses the stage on shaky legs, clenching the ceremonial certificate they all get (until real diplomas are mailed in a few weeks) in her hand on her way back to her seat.

For two:

The news runs at least one story every week about what happened four months back. They show grainy cell phone footage of their Zords destroying Main Street all the way to Reefside. There are pictures of Jason in his armor, outside his Zord, but their favorite clip, by far, is one of that stupid dance move they'd somehow managed to do in that weird, Zord-hybrid they'd all made together when she was certain they were going to die.

Someone on Amazon starts selling action figures of them. Plastic ones that must have been a pain to mold, which is why they're all identical. Trini's brothers have all five of them before they go out of stock for the second time and she looks at them one night in July, holds them up to the low lamplight in Trini's living room instead of watching the movie the boys picked out for their weekly Help-Trini-Babysit night. Her own is hot pink, rather than the metallic thulian it is in reality. The helmet is shaped like Jason's.

She's too flattered to complain.

For three:

Her parents drift impossibly further away the minute they realize that she has no real plans for college and that -- beyond that -- refuses to say whether or not she'd been accepted to any of the schools she applied to in the fall.

She _had_. Berkeley, UCLA, and Purdue.

She has the acceptance packets stuffed in the very back of her closet, under a duffel bag full of her cheerleading sweats that she couldn't stomach looking at after being forced off the team.

Eventually, they stop asking. They stop talking entirely. Little things -- _Good morning,_ and, _Goodnight_ \-- are safe, apparently. But her dad no longer grills her over where she spends her long hours. Her mom stops asking why she always comes home with wet shoes and half-dry hair, dumping water out of her sneakers in the driveway.

The back end of high school had seen her wishing for something quite like this: more breathing room, less unnecessary authority. Riling them up was half the fun she was able to get once she'd shot down the first of their expectations of her with ten weeks of mandatory Saturday school. She'd cut her hair with a dull pair of scissors in the school bathroom for that reason alone.

( there were other reasons, too, but that was the one that mattered the most at the time )

It's better this way. That's what she tells herself. By the end of June, she's started to believe it.

For four:

Things get easier. It doesn't make any sort of logical sense, really, because there's the literal ( well, _metaphorical_ ) weight of the world on her shoulders, and she spends six days out of seven going toe-to-toe with holographs that aren't holographs while four other kid superheroes and a prehistoric android watch.

But she's not alone anymore. And that's certainly something.

Zack is always there with an inappropriate joke, or a pun no one asked for or particularly wanted. He slings his heavy arms around Kimberly's shoulders and gives Trini noogies. Fist bumps Billy too often and tries to give Jason a wedgie at least twice a week.

Billy smiles too wide, shows all of his teeth. He presses his shoulders into Kimberly's whenever they're sitting together -- in the pit while the others spar, in a booth at the Denny's one town over because the majority of Angel Grove's cheapest restaurants were decimated in the fight. He waves hello and goodbye every time she sees him.

Jason stares at her too long some days and she minds for exactly three weeks until she realizes that he does it with all of them. Some sort of distant, brotherly affection that's rooted in the understanding of what they have together, steeped in the memory of Billy's dead weight when they'd been carrying him together what feels like a lifetime ago. He's careful not to touch them, but they go to see a movie together one night after graduation and he pays for all of their tickets and waves them off when they ask where he got the money.

Trini--

Well, actually, that's another thing that's changed.

At the start, there was nothing more than a few lingering stares, punctuated by friendly smiles, and an undercurrent of understanding between them that didn't need to be stated. The only girls on a superhero team. What other choice did they have but to become close?

So there were texts and the occasional phone call. Then a SnapChat streak that's still ticking up each day, with a heart emoji beside it. Then Kimberly was invited to a family dinner that became an every-other-night sort of deal. Trini's brothers took a shine to her and followed her around with the same look in their eyes Kimberly was starting to see from their sister, too.

But that was normal friend stuff. That was expected. Inevitable. And Kimberly didn't think anything of it.

Until Zack says, "Jesus, could she be any more gone on you?" on the fifth consecutive Friday night they're spending in Trini's living room, crowded around the TV.

There's a movie playing on the screen, but she's not paying attention to it because Jason picked it out. Which means too many fight scenes. Too much gore. Too many sweaty men being tough and yelling at each other. Billy is asleep on the loveseat, his head lolling back on the cushion. Jason is beside him, legs crossed in the way she's only seen boys and Trini do before -- his left leg bent like a chicken wing across his right knee.

Zack less _says_ it than whispers it, right into her ear, and his breath smells like the Red Bull he shotgunned not five minutes ago.

"Huh?" Kimberly asks, because she's not following and the conversation has only just begun. She can hear Trini making noise in the kitchen just a room away, the light above the oven the only one on, trickling warm as it angles in through the arched doorway. She hears the fridge open, the accompanying buzz.

She sets down her empty Coke can on the coffee table and smacks her lips, dryly, wondering if she should get up and get something else to drink just to get away from Zack and his sticky, sweet breath.

"She's getting you something to drink."

It's weird. That's all there is to it.

Mostly because there's been this buzzing tendril of _something_ between all five of them since they morphed that first time, since Billy came up, but so far it's only been small things. A thrill of anxiety when they're in a crowded place that she thinks is from Billy. Gruff exasperation from Jason all the way across town on nights when his dad is home. Loose panic in the middle of the night sometimes that wakes her up in a cold sweat and reminds her of all those other times when she'd had nightmares of her own.

They've only talked about it twice. Once alone, and then with Zordon, who'd given them nothing more than cryptic non-sequiturs about becoming a stronger team and "connecting". Whatever that means.

But right now, it's as if Zack has read her mind and it's startling, to say the least.

"Huh?"

She's like a broken record now.

Zack rolls his eyes and slumps further back on the couch. "You're out, right?" he asks, eyeing the can of Coke she's just set down. She nods. "And then Trini magically disappears to the kitchen. Surprise, surprise. She's whipped and you're not even dating. It'd be sad if it weren't so cute."

"She's being friendly," Kimberly says quickly, but she can hear an edge of panic in her voice that makes her uncomfortable for reasons she can't specify. "That's what friends do."

Part of her aggravation, she thinks, is in the tone Zack's voice had when he said it, rather than it what he's implying. Although she has yet to come right out and confirm it (is _that_ what you're supposed to expect in that sort of situation, anyway?) Trini's confession at their bonfire, back before Rita, had left little to assume about her romantic (or sexual or _whatever_ ) preferences. What she doesn't like is that Zack is being so forward in his implication.

"Oh, baby," Zack says. His voice has lost that aggravating edge and has been replaced, instead, with something like pity. She hates it more. "How have you not noticed Trini's massive lady boner for you?"

And--

_Well then._

Before she can argue, though, Trini comes padding back into the room with another can of soda in her hand. She gives it to Kimberly and sits down beside her, pressing herself back into the armrest so that they're not touching on the too-small couch. It's intentional, Kimberly realizes. Trini is intentionally trying not to touch her.

"Thanks," she says quietly and Trini meets her eyes, smile fleetingly, and then looks away. Embarrassed.

And now that Zack's come out and said it, it's hard to ignore.

This is -- impossibly -- the biggest change. Because suddenly she can't ignore the staring. The shy smiles. How quickly Trini dodges her whenever they're too close, just to keep a bodily distance between them. She remembers the locker door thing later that night and sits in her car with her hands on her steering wheel, staring vacantly at the closed garage door, as she tries to remember how to breathe normally.

But it's not the biggest change simply because of Trini's side of things, Zack's ridiculous enlightenment. No, the biggest change comes in the form of what happens next.

The way Kimberly feels sick when Trini smiles at her, the way she can't help but stare at the dip of her collarbone when she's drinking from her water bottle at the end of training the next day. Her eyes follow the gentle line of her upper arm, down to her elbow, and settle on Trini's fingers, curled around the metal bottleneck. She imagines those fingers curled around her hip, pulling her closer, sliding up under the hem of her tank top to splay across her ribs. Imagines Trini's soft, soft lips moving slowly down her neck, to the hinge of her jaw, sighing against Kimberly's skin.

"You okay?" Trini asks, when she catches her staring.

And Kimberly _is._ Of course she is. She says as much and Trini buys it easily with a smile that makes her sort of feel like the ground has dropped out from underneath her.

It's new. It's different.

It's a bad idea.

So Kimberly pushes it to the back of her mind and spends the first two months of summer ignoring it.

She doesn't think there's really a better option anyway.

.

That's a lie, actually. She knows how she feels about Kimberly, undeniably, and she thinks she's known since the beginning. It's like how she had felt when Kimberly asked her for a sip of water, and Trini had known that Kimberly wouldn't _actually_ die from thirst, at least, not after just an hour, but it wasn't meant to be a literal statement. She couldn't resist hearing the literal meaning, though, and with her empathy compellingly kicking in, she had handed over her water bottle and the rest of her fate with it. Knowing that the inevitable was coming and having no control against being pulled under the tide -- that's what liking Kimberly is.

She can't control what her thoughts naturally gravitate to, to an extent, but she can control what she does about them. The five of them are in her living room watching an action movie Jason had picked out that's practically indistinguishable from the rest of Netflix's action catalog. Trini thinks that guy from Twilight is the main lead, but she can't be sure because her thoughts keep flickering to Kimberly who's sitting right beside her, so close that it's suffocating and she wants to scream. Over and over, she considers that maybe she should talk to Kimberly about their SnapChat streak at some point, but the time has already passed, and then she can feel a slight inkling of disappointment as Kimberly takes a sip of her Coke, something that feels similar to when Trini is done with her iced tea, so she stands and heads for the kitchen without saying anything.

She flips on the light above the oven and takes a shaky breath, leaning against the stovetop, her hand close to one of the burners. The thought slips into her mind without effort, but she forces it back down, nudging her feet over to the fridge. The door opens easily, and the cold air washes over her like a rebirth, shaking off the intrusion of her anxiety. The sensation of the cold aluminum against her fingertips as she grabs another can of iced tea for herself and a Coke for Kimberly helps ground her in the moment. Trini lets the fridge close with a soft _thump_ then pads back into the living room and hands Kimberly her soda, careful to avoid their fingers brushing.

"Thanks," Kimberly murmurs, and all Trini can do is give a small smile that feels half-forced.

Resuming her seat on the couch, she curls against the armrest and taps the top of her can then pops it with a satisfying hiss. Trini takes a slow sip of iced tea, restraining herself from shuddering as she can feel Kimberly's eyes flicker over to her.

That happens a lot, Kimberly looking at her, and Trini has a hunch that she knows what it means, but she tells herself to focus on the movie and ignore it because that sure has worked out well enough in the past, and she doesn't fix what's not broken, anyway.

.

That is, until she can't anymore, at least.

.

A few days later, Trini notices it again when she's taking a drink of water after training, sweat plastering her tank top to her skin and the rest of her brain thankfully drowned out by the adrenaline pumping in her veins. It's the only way she doesn't immediately, mentally, fly into a panic when she can sense Kimberly staring at her. Finishing her sip, Trini screws the cap back onto her bottle -- a new one, dark yellow, since she'd lost the old one when Kimberly yanked her over the ravine -- and gazes back at Kimberly. "You okay?" she asks.

The answer Kimberly gives her is most likely not the entire truth, but Trini lets it slide because it's not like she's standing on a roof and yelling out her truth to the others, either, so.

So, that's that.

.

Like most things that end up spiralling, the whole thing is Jason's fault.

They're in Billy's living room when he breaks the news, slamming down a stack made up of various newspaper articles and printed out internet ones, onto his coffee table, making Zack jump from where he's squeezed onto the couch between Trini and Jason.

The meeting had been called by Billy earlier that morning, urging them to come over as soon as they could in the group message they've had going since the third day of their fun, new intergalactic responsibility. Kimberly had been the last to arrive an hour after the message came through, and she's perched on the couch armrest as a consequence. Billy's house has just about everything, from a mother who means the best of any parent she's ever met, to an endless supply of snacks in the pantry. What it lacks is more than a simple, three-person couch in a living room meant for the only two inhabitants of the house.

Jason cranes his neck to read some of the titles of the articles. Frowning, he says, "U.F.O. sightings? Billy, what are these?"

"What you just said," Billy tells him, looking frantic. "U.F.O. sightings. Everywhere!"

"Everywhere meaning?"

"Everywhere! Across the country."

"Okay…"

"But the worst-- The worst is this ring right here." Billy leans down and pushes forward one of the online articles that has a map of the country on it. There's a small, red circle towards the Southern end of Texas. "In Texas. From Catarina to Rockport. More than sixty sightings along this line--" He points to the line he's drawn in the middle of the circle from one city to the other "--in a month and there's a guy in Catarina-- a guy who--" He breaks off, waving his hand a little, and looking even more harried than he had before as he rushes to present all of the information.

"Breathe, dude," Zack says softly.

Kimberly glances at him, and then back at Billy who flaps his hand again before finishing.

"He got a video of them. Eight lights all moving around sporadically! For twenty minutes. And then they just...disappear!"

"Lots of people have pictures and videos of U.F.O.'s," Trini cuts in. She's sitting uncomfortably, her spine curved forward away from the back of the couch where Jason has his arm draped and then to the right, presumably to keep her distance from Kimberly's leg. "What's the big deal?"

She can really only see the top of Trini's head, which means that, when she looks down, she's getting a good look at the woven fabric of her beanie. Her beanie that she's wearing even though it's ninety-six degrees outside. Something in her chest flutters. She looks away and presses her palm to it, tries to get it to stop.

"The big deal," Billy says, "is that now we know this stuff is real. And- And…"

"And Rita said there'd be others," Jason finishes for him.

Billy makes a noise of agreement in the back of his throat and points at Jason before dropping his arm.

Zack looks between them both. "Okay? What do you want me to do about it? I can't punch orbiting lights."

Kimberly turns her head to look at him, only to catch Trini glancing up at her instead. But Trini looks away after a moment, biting the corner of her lip, like she's lost in thought and it's ridiculous, of course, to be so distracted by that. But Kimberly is.

"Look, guys," Jason begins and he pushes himself to his feet so that he can stand beside Billy and tower above them. Their sovereign leader, ready with another lecture, some other unwarranted disciplinary action or reminder of their "sacred duty".

It's late August now and he's spent the entire summer high on the thrill of being their anointed boss or whatever title Zordon crowned him with.  The lectures haven't stopped. There was a time, in the beginning, when he'd still chafed against Zordon's heavy expectations -- runoff, perhaps, from his own disastrous relationship with his father. But since their victory, things have been different. Like they're some sort of (very small) military force and they've had to slide into their roles, what's expected of them. Jason's role just so happens to be closest to the top and involve hope-speeches straight from an episode of _The Brady Bunch_.

"There could be some substance to this," he tells them, and now he's got his hands on his hips. Kimberly quirks an eyebrow when he glances her way, and he slides them down to rest in his pockets instead, like he's embarrassed being caught in an unanticipated moment of parental reprimand. "Rita said there would be others. Fifty sightings--"

" _Sixty_ ," Billy corrects.

Jason glances at him. "Sixty sightings is a lot. It might be worth looking into."

"And how do you expect us to do that, O Captain, My Captain?" Trini asks.

Zack snickers into his palm.

Jason glares. "I don't know," he admits. "We could...go...try and see them for ourselves?"

In Texas, Kimberly thinks. He wants them to go see these lights in _Texas_.

Zack's eyes go wide, Trini sighs and turns to meet Kimberly's eyes, her expression annoyed and distant.

"We are not going all the way to _Texas_ for some mysterious lights in the sky, Jason," says Kimberly. "This isn't _The X-Files_. How do you expect us to get there?"

"I can't leave my mom for that, man," Zack says, suddenly serious.

"Well, we can't all go anyway," Jason tells them. "We can't all just...leave here."

 _We can't leave the crystal,_ goes unsaid, but they all shift uncomfortably in the silence that follows.

"Look, my parents aren't gonna play for a plane ticket," Trini says. "I can tell you that much."

There's a good chance that Kimberly's won't either, but she doesn't say that, letting it, instead, go without saying in the quiet that follows. As much as graduating and the very real possibility of never having a future outside of this godforsaken city has made her feel like an adult in the past month, she's new at it and her parents have yet to fully accept that she's there _at all_. Except--

"We could drive."

Kimberly says it so quietly that she's almost sure she's gone unheard, but then Trini throws her a scathing look. Like she's trying to punish her with mere eye contact for giving Jason anything more to work with. She looks away.

"I don't drive," Billy reminds them.

"So, someone else would have to go," Jason tells him and Billy nods.

"It'll be a twenty hour drive," he says. "Give or take."

"Not it!" Zack crows, throwing his hand up to press his right forefinger to the tip of his nose.

It's ridiculous and they're superheroes now, chosen by some divine circumstance to protect the world's life force. They're not middle-schoolers. But Jason goes along without hesitating, jerking his own arm up to press his finger to his nose, too. Then Billy, looking between the two of them, does the same.

All of it happens in the span of about two seconds. Kimberly and Trini don't stand a chance.

"Sucks to be a girl," Zack says, sing-song, and then grunts when Trini digs her elbow into his ribcage. "In this instance," he clarifies quickly, pulling his hand down and ducking his head. "Not, like, in general."

"Are we really gonna decide it like this?" Trini asks, looking up at Jason. "For real?"

Kimberly nods and Jason glances between them hastily. Looks away. "Look, someone's gotta go. I know Zordon would agree that we at least need to check it out."

And there it is. His secret weapon.

As much as they're all inherently annoyed by their resident face-in-the-wall, there's something to this weird...connection they all have. Because at the mention of his name, Kimberly immediately feels a tugging sense of duty and knows that there's no point in arguing further.

Trini must feel it, too, but she doesn't give up as easily. "Really, Scott? _Really_?"

He still won't look at her directly. Kimberly can't blame him.

"Well, I don't think we need more than two people," he says. "But we can't send just one. And since Billy can't drive, Zack can't leave his mom, and I can't go, for obvious reasons...that just leaves you two."

"Bullshit," Trini cuts in. "What obvious reasons?"

Jason splutters. "I...I can't just…"

He can't drive further than across town. Kimberly knows this, because he'd confessed as much, late one night, after training. When she'd given him a ride home. He's had his license returned to him for two months and his dad has, thankfully, given him permission to drive his new truck when its not in use. But he prefers to walk, prefers someone else behind the wheel. She can't blame him, exactly.

But she doesn't tell Trini this. Instead, she says, "He's designated daddy's boy," and, "Who will kiss Zordon's ass while he's away?"

She's kidding, of course, but only in the barest of terms. Jason deserves to hear it, deserves to squirm and look generally uncomfortable by her chosen vocabulary.

Trini flops back against the couch, her shoulder brushing lightly against Kimberly's bare thigh. "Fuck me," she says softly and when Kimberly looks at her, eyes on the curve of her lips, the flutter-soft of her eyelashes against her cheeks, she's got her eyes closed. "Sucks to suck, then, huh?"

Kimberly laughs. She couldn't tell you why. "I guess."

The vague outline of a plan is discussed:

The girls will drive ( Kimberly is thankful she has a car, at least ), alternating between the two of them. It's going to take, at the least, more than three days to get down there, because neither of them is particularly eager to drive longer than eight hours each day. Zack googles _How old do you have to be to book a hotel room?_ and shares his findings proudly, holding his phone up for them to see the search results. Trini says something about snacks and asks about the speakers in Kimberly's car.

An hour later, they're standing on the street by her car, watching Zack disappear down the sidewalk with a wave. Jason is lingering on the porch, talking in a low voice to Billy. Trini has her hands stuffed into the pockets of her shorts, but she pulls one free to adjust her beanie. Glances at Kimberly. Looks away.

"So," she starts, her voice low and gravelly in a way that shocks through Kimberly's chest, "which one of us is Scully?"

"Depends on what we're expecting to find," Kimberly says, and it hasn't hit her yet what they're being sent to look for. What they're supposed to _do_ if they find something.

Maybe it hasn't hit Trini yet either.

They stand there for a few seconds longer, the heavy summer heat in Kimberly's lungs and tossing her keys back and forth between her hands, and Trini's hair moving with the light afternoon breeze.

Everything feels distant, numb, shifting. Things keep changing.

Kimberly can hardly keep up.

.

Except it's not that, and as Trini had flopped back against the couch in Billy's living room, glad that she's wearing a slightly thicker t-shirt when she feels her shoulder brush against Kimberly's thigh, she knows that this is going to be bad. For once, she just hopes that she can wriggle her way out of it, somehow.

For once, however, her parents are completely too fine with her going on a road trip. Maybe it's how she'd worded it -- yep, definitely how she worded it since saying that it was a fun road trip before her semester at AGCC starts soon implied that she was actually getting out of the house for a good reason instead of getting out of the house and… She doesn't finish that thought.

Besides, her parents know Kimberly and the others, and worse, they _like_ Kimberly and the others, which means Trini can't get her mom to say no, no matter how hard she tries. Just her damn luck that, the one time she wants her mom to actually screw her over with smothering overprotectiveness, she's ready to let Trini go.

Terrible, really.

.

When Trini calls that night, Kimberly's clipped, "Hey," is met with a dramatic groan and the sound of sheets rustling in the background. Kimberly laughs, imagines Trini flopping, frustrated, onto her bed, face-first. Her cell phone pressed to her ear.

"What's wrong?" she asks, giddy warmth buzzing through her stomach.

"My mother is excited," Trini tells her, enunciated and clear. "She's actually excited that I -- _quote --_ ‘have a girlfriend to share life experiences with'. End quote."

For a moment, Kimberly's heart stutters in her chest, but then--

"And I think she used the word ‘girlfriend' in the heterosexual, middle-aged woman way. To my own disgust."

 _Oh_.

That makes more sense.

"It could be worse," Kimberly says quickly. "She could be refusing to let you go."

"That would be _better_ , Kim. You're missing the point. Then I wouldn't have to go."

"Like Jason would let you back out now."

Another groan. "She also said something about Thelma and Louise."

Oh.

Kimberly stops emptying her duffel bag into the bottom of her closet and halts, her phone pinned between her right shoulder and her ear. Her mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. "Didn't they commit suicide?"

"Spoilers, Kimmy."

The sun is setting outside her window and her phone keeps buzzing against the side of her face because Jason keeps texting her a recap of every cryptic word that had come out of Zordon's mouth when he'd been brought up to speed earlier. He's always one to assume that her lack of response is his cue to triple, quadruple, or quintuple text her until she finally answers. She'd be annoyed if she had it in her to feel anything other than this humming, heady excitement at the prospect of a week in a car alone with Trini.

"I don't think my mom will even notice until we're in another state," she says, confessing without meaning to.

Silence follows and it's been two months but she knows Trini well enough by this point to understand exactly what face it is she's making right now. How seriously she has her eyebrows furrowed. She hears her sigh.

"Well, on that depressing note," she says, and the tension is gone. Just like that. "Noon tomorrow?"

Kimberly drops her duffel bag. "That's a little late, don't you think?"

Another sigh. "Fuck me for wanting to sleep in, huh?"

The call ends a minute later, after mutually agreeing on nine o'clock. Kimberly shoves t-shirts and running shorts and socks into her bag. Tosses too many clothes in, maybe. Empties a drawer or two. Just in case.

Downstairs, she can hear CNN droning on in the living room, drifting up the steps and through her open bedroom door. Her mom is clicking around the kitchen in the heels she wore to work. She thinks she can hear her dad clipping open a can of beer and say something about dinner.

After a moment, she closes her door and zips her duffel bag up, tosses it on the floor beside her bed. She goes to bed early and spends most of the night awake, staring up at her ceiling and waiting for her alarm to go off.

.

Trini had reluctantly compromised on nine for Kimberly picking her up because she can anticipate how the morning right before will go for her, and she's almost got it down to a dot.

She wakes up feeling a sense of dread sitting on her chest, and it takes a full ten minutes before she can make herself get up. Then, she vomits nothing into her toilet and curses that it's only half past six.

Her parents are already up and making breakfast, and Trini grabs the plate for her that would've ended up going into the fridge for preservation and takes it to her room. Her mom tries to stop her, of course, but Trini keeps walking because she wishes some of that "no" energy had been around last night.

Alex and Diego are still sound asleep, which means they'll be reheating their own breakfast later on since they wake up pretty late during the summer, which she won't be around to supervise. Almost dropping her plate on the last step at the top of the stairs, Trini freezes, inhaling sharply. They're gonna be fine, she tells herself, they're gonna be fine, they're gonna be fine. Jason, Billy, and Zack will still be in town, and as much as that doesn't sound like the most responsible of choices, she trusts them with her family. She trusts family with other family.

Crisis slightly averted but her chest still feeling slightly tight, Trini goes into her room and shuts the door, locking it, then sits down at her desk and scrambles around for her phone and headphones to sit through a meditation exercise while she eats.

.

It's easy to pack everything she needs in one backpack, but the hard part is worrying about if she had forgotten something. Trini makes a checklist. Her mom sends her texts of articles on road trip dangers and packing checklists, and they get into a brief argument about how she can't _do_ things like that because the anxiety starts to claw at Trini's brain and this was a terrible idea and--

It gets resolved, but for the life of her, later, she can't remember how.

Trini makes a second checklist, realizes she forgot deodorant and her contact case. She leaves tucking away her medicine for last and stuffs a cotton ball into the bottle so that it doesn't rattle while it's in her backpack.

Slinging her backpack over her shoulder and tucking her almost-as-big-as-her shark pillow under her arm, she takes the stairs down two at a time, miraculously not tripping and busting her head open in the foyer. Trini gets to the bottom, a grimace already on her face because of that thought, her mood two inches away from properly irked.

"You're bringing that?" her mom asks, clearly directed at her pillow, raising her eyebrows, and Trini can already feel a lecture coming on.

"Yeah," Trini says, curtly, "I need it."

Her mom pauses but decides not to pursue that conversation track. "Do you have everything else you need?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure?"

" _Yes._ "

"Okay, if you run into an emergency, call me or your father -- you still have his work extension, right?"

"Yes," she sighs, heading for the door.

"Text me whenever you make a stop-- text both of us," her mom reminds, sternly.

Trini yanks the door open, grumbling, and yells, "I will!" over her shoulder then walks right out into Kimberly and the boys waiting for her.

Zack sees her shark pillow and smirks, the gears in his mind already turning.

God, she really wishes they knew so that she could avoid this. It makes her feel bad for thinking it, but a little bit of smugness rises in her at the idea of Zack apologizing because he doesn't know what this pillow means to her and he'd feel terrible if he knew.

Well, no time for that right now.

.

"Make sure you don't speed. And stop to stretch every few hours. Keep me updated. Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

To be honest, Kimberly isn't sure she's ever going to understand how Jason is always so perky first thing in the morning. It's one thing at nine o'clock on a Wednesday in August, another at five o'clock when they'd still been in school and he'd been waiting for them in the pit, already warmed up and much too bright-eyed for the early hour. It was grating before she'd understood that she would die for him (for all of them, really), but now it's insufferable.

She stuffs her hands into the pocket of her old cheerleading hoodie, scuffs her sneakers into the grass beside Trini's driveway. Zack is leaning against a tree and Billy is shifting nervously beside him. They look antsy, like they're waiting for something, and Kimberly knows the feeling even if she doesn't understand it.

Trini is somewhere inside. She'd popped her head out a minute after Kimberly's car had rumbled into the driveway, and -- when Kimberly rolled the window down -- she'd held up a finger to gesture that she'd only be a minute before disappearing back inside. Two minutes later, the boys arrived, shuffling down the street together in a way that implied they'd all met somewhere first before walking here. Jason's house, maybe. Two streets over from Trini's.

She's starting to regret putting their departure time in the group message.

"That doesn't leave much," she says and Jason gives her what she thinks is supposed to be a stern look, but just ends up implying constipation. She looks away, bites the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. "I don't even really know what we're supposed to be doing."

"Looking for the lights," Billy reminds her. "Reporting back."

Still, that's so open-ended that Kimberly doesn't even want to waste the gas money on the whole thing. She doesn't have time to argue, though, because the front door finally opens and Trini comes stumbling out onto her front porch.

"I will!" she practically shouts into the open door and then slams it shut before turning around to face them. She has her backpack slung over her shoulder and what looks like a body-pillow-sized stuffed shark under her arm.

Zack perks up when he sees it, standing up and stepping forward with a smirk.

"Don't you dare," Trini says, throwing him a look that only makes him smile wider.

Kimberly pops open her trunk and steps aside as Trini moves forward, watching her stuff her things in before shutting it. Turning to face the boys.

"Ready?" she asks and Kimberly nods because she doesn't have a better response.

They hug the boys goodbye, one-by-one.

Kimberly offers to drive first, too nervous about the prospect of the next six days to properly sit in the passenger seat. Trini doesn't argue. She just climbs into the other side of the car and waves to the boys, lined up at the edge of her driveway, as Kimberly backs out onto the street.

"A lot of road trip movies end poorly," she says ten minutes later, when they're right on the edge of town. "And pretty much every female friendship movie has a high body count by the finale."

"Is that a threat?" Kimberly jokes and Trini laughs.

When she turns to look at her, she's smiling -- white teeth and the morning air whipping in her rolled-down window.

 _Drive Carefully,_ the sign on the edge of the city limits says, _Come back soon._

.

Shortly after leaving, she pulls up Gia's Facebook and sends her a message, just in case. She doesn't know if they'll pass by Phoenix -- they most likely will -- but she doesn't want to try their luck with guessing which motels or hotels in their budget aren't seedy murderhouses. Gia doesn't answer immediately, which makes sense because people have lives, but Trini already feels the pressing weight of anxiety tickling at her brain. Thankfully, Facebook Messenger shows read receipts, so she lets out a small sigh of relief, knowing that her insecurities, for now, are unwarranted.

Trini tucks her phone back in her pocket and rolls her window down, letting the wind whip through her hair. She resists the urge to run her fingers along her hairline, and instead, leaves her arm resting on the door, the air brushing against her skin.

"A lot of road trips end poorly," she remarks, abruptly, not knowing why she says it. The thought just pops into her head, and she hates that her brain just works like that. Billy would understand. Billy does understand, just doesn't know that she understands him, too, always thinking things slightly related but ultimately not entire relevant, feeling a hard urge to just voice all of it aloud. "And pretty much every female friendship movie has a high body count by the finale."

Kimberly, however, takes it as a joke, not as a weird remark from a weird girl. "Is that a threat?" she teases.

Trini laughs and rolls her eyes, watching the sign for the city limits pass them by.

.

Trini wouldn't normally do something like this in the car with either of her parents -- or in _any_ car, period -- but Kimberly's driving and they haven't seen anything resembling civilization for miles now, including other cars. They passed an 18-wheeler awhile back, and that was it. So, Trini has her seatbelt half off and is sitting sideways in her seat, back against the door, socks against the console between her and Kimberly, her knees bent and drawn to her chest. Her shoes are kicked off, forgotten on the floor, her right shoelace still untied from when she'd neglected to fix it earlier. It's such a dangerous position to be in, especially because Trini can actually visualize all the ways she could die right now if they suddenly got into a crash, but there's nothing on the road as far as she can see -- which is a lot farther than regular humans, so.

She does it for the feeling, tilting her head back against the window and pulling her hoodie closer around her body. The car hums lowly, pleasantly vibrating deep into her bones, and she feels the sunlight beating through the glass and warming up her entire back. Her seat is so warm because there's nothing out here but the sky and the sun and them, and she is so warm.

"Eyes on the road," she chides, quietly, with her eyes closed, smirking a little when Kimberly softly sighs, exasperatedly.

"There's nothing even here to watch for," Kimberly mutters, but her tone isn't irritated, just playfully annoyed.

Trini opens one eye and catches Kimberly glancing at her again. "Sure there is," she replies, cryptically, leaving Kimberly hanging.

"What? Hm?" Kimberly taps the steering wheel with one hand then gestures out the windshield. Trini doesn't have to look to see that it's all just a bunch of tan and blue and heat, but beyond that, it's all just the same atoms, the same matter bundled up together to make something beautiful. Something like exactly how she feels when she leans her head back and feels the sun beating down on her clothes and skin, knowing that if she opens her eyes, Kim's going to be right in front of her.

"There's nothing out here," Kimberly repeats.

"Sure there is," Trini repeats, and she almost says _we are_ or _you are_ but she thinks of something better.

Kimberly gazes at her, expectantly.

She answers, finally, "The world."

A long moment passes, Kimberly's eyes on her, her staring right back, and she swears neither of them breathe for a second--

And then a soft _thud_ jolts Trini in her seat, and Kimberly quickly pulls them back into their lane, not that there's anything to even run into. Kimberly is the first to laugh, clutching the steering wheel and shaking her head. Trini just rolls her eyes, lets out a quick chuckle, and straightens up, settling back into a proper sitting position and fixing her seatbelt and adjusting her beanie. "Good thing those markers are there," Trini grumbles, fiddling with her jacket zipper, "You were drifting."

"Nothing else to see out here," Kimberly counters, casting another glance at her.

This time, Trini looks away and out the window, hoping that it's the sun's heat on her skin that's making her cheeks feel so warm.

.

They reach Arizona by two o'clock. Trini's spent the last hour drifting in and out of a restless, head-lolling sleep, but she perks up when she sees the, _Welcome to Arizona,_ sign on the side of the road. A few minutes later, Kimberly rolls into a gas station on the side of the road and gets out of the car, stretches her legs.

Trini leans against the passenger door while she gases up, glancing around at their surroundings and blinking sleepily.

"Good nap?" Kimberly asks. Can't help smirking.

Trini shrugs. "Sure. Just...avoid more dips next time I try and we'll be good. Capische?"

No real aggravation in her voice. She smiles.

"Sure thing."

In the candy bar aisle, Kimberly rolls her head back and forth to stretch her neck while Trini peruses her snack options. They're the only ones in the whole place, save for the bored looking employee behind the counter ten feet away. The bathroom had been clean enough when she'd been in there two minutes ago, though, so Kimberly doesn't feel like she has room to complain about much.

"Should we be aiming for a motel or something?" she asks after a minute.

Trini flips the nutritional flap on the Crunch Bar she's holding back down and eyes her carefully. "I know a guy in Phoenix," she offers.

Nothing more.

"Meaning?" Kimberly prods.

Trini shrugs. Grabs a Nerds Rope and starts towards the counter. "Less a guy than a some friends from when I lived there," she clarifies. The guy behind the counter rattles off the total and she forks over a twenty-dollar bill. Waits for her change. "They've offered the couch."

For some reason Kimberly can't place, a motel sounds better than some stranger's couch, but it doesn't feel right to fight Trini on this. It doesn't feel like the kind of thing she should be wasting her breath on, at all. She hadn't even known that Trini lived in Phoenix, that it was one of the places she'd stayed in briefly. Maybe in the last year or so.

It strikes her how much there is that she doesn't _know_ and there's this faraway feeling of suffocation that feels melodramatic, even for _her_.

"Oh," she says, instead of whatever argument she might be able to formulate. "Okay."

Trini nods and shoves her change into the pocket of her shorts before leading them out of the gas station and back to the car. She stands by the driver's side door for a second and then flicks her eyebrows up. "Keys?" she asks.

"Right."

Kimberly tosses them to her. Watches her climb in. Gets into the passenger seat and plays with the fabric of her seat belt while Trini gets comfortable and turns on the car.

"Is that okay?"

It's asked what feels like a lifetime later, when they're back on the highway. Kimberly looks away from the trees flashing by outside her window, to Trini, who is gripping the steering wheel tight and pointedly not looking at her.

"Yeah," she says. "Of course."

"Okay. Cause if it wasn't, it's...it's whatever, you know? We can stay at a hotel instead or something."

It strikes Kimberly then that seeing old friends might be one of the few things Trini is looking forward to during this trip. The realization aches deep inside of her, some kind of longing for something that isn't hers. Trini had a life before all of this. Before their...sacred duty, or whatever. She had a life and she lived other places, went to other schools, had other friends.

 _Girlfriends_ , maybe, too.

"That would be dumb if your friends offered, Trin," she says carefully and Trini glances at her. Looks away. But she's smiling. Kimberly can see the curve of her lips.

"Yeah. Kind of."

They drive in silence for a while and Kimberly bites her lip too hard and watches the clouds moving in the sky, chasing after them. She tells herself that you can't be jealous over something -- some _one_ \-- that isn't even hers.

.

When they stop at a gas station shortly past a sign that welcomes them to Arizona's borders, Trini stretches and checks her phone as Kimberly heads for the bathroom. There's a new notification on her Facebook Messenger app, but, of course, Trini had muted it so the notification hadn't woken her up from her nap. Gia's responded with an offer of her and Emma's couch, predictably, which Trini thinks is possibly more of Emma's doing. Gia definitely would've suggested meeting up for coffee or something, but Emma would talk her girlfriend into being hospitable, not that Trini really minds. She's too busy with her own head most of the time to overanalyze things if Gia _hadn't_ offered their couch.

Trini closes the Messenger app then takes a picture of the gas station and sends it to her and Kimberly's chat, even though they had already done their streak Snaps for the day earlier. Kimberly opens it right away, naturally.

Once Kimberly comes out of the bathroom, she finds Trini already browsing the candy aisle. "Should we be aiming for a motel or something?" she asks, and for a brief flash of a moment, Trini worries that she hasn't been careful enough about keeping her brain on lock. She's been cautious ever since they all figured out that they could vaguely feel each other, but thankfully, it's not like the others _know_ to expect something from her, so they don't look for it. Still, the timing of Gia's response and Kimberly's question catches her off-guard.

She fidgets with the Crunch bar in her hands and eyes Kimberly, a little warily. "I know a guy in Phoenix," she says, slowly.

The moment after the words leave her mouth, Trini wants to bang her head into the shelf. Why would she say something like that? Was she trying to sound casual? Because she doesn't know Kimberly _that_ well and she just offered a stranger's couch, but "a guy" sounds infinitely worse than "two girls," especially given, like, the news nowadays on a daily basis and those road trip danger articles her mom had spammed her with this morning.

"Meaning?" Kimberly follows up, clearly expecting more.

Trini internally jumps at the chance to fix her dumb mistake but plays it cool as she grabs a Nerds Rope and heads to checkout. "Less a guy than some friends from when I lived there," she elaborates. "They've offered a couch."

It doesn't strike her until they're back on the road and she's behind the wheel that maybe she should've asked Kimberly _before_ asking Gia, and Trini sighs to herself.

"Is that okay?" she asks into the silence, not clarifying what it is.

Kimberly knows. "Yeah, of course."

Trini continues, though, still on track with the idea of her mistake of not asking Kimberly first because they're road trip partners and Thelma and Louise or whatever, and instead, she'd just made their plans for the night without asking. Stupid. "Okay. 'Cause, if it wasn't, it's… it's whatever, you know?" It's definitely not whatever, but Trini tries to not let that seep into her tone. "We can stay at a hotel instead or something."

There's a long moment of silence where Trini considers jerking the steering wheel, but the thought makes her so sick and this whole conversation makes her so--

"That would be dumb if your friends offered, Trin," Kimberly says, softly, and Trini shoots her a quick glance.

When she looks back at the road, she smiles a little bit. Just a little. "Yeah. Kind of."

.

Jason texts her for the first time an hour later.

_How's it going?_

Just to her. Not in the group message. As if asking it privately will change her answer.

 _Good,_ Kimberly lies and pretends that she means it.

.

Trini's friends live in an apartment complex made up of long, single-story buildings. More townhomes than actual apartments. It's hot when they step outside the car and Trini checks her phone three times before she pops the truck and gets her things.

Harwood Apartments is not an area Trini is quite familiar with since Gia and Emma have long since moved away from the area surrounding their old high school. Compelled to check her phone every few seconds as she and Kimberly get their luggage out of the trunk, Trini triple checks that she has the directions and apartment number Gia sent her correct. "They're in 4C," she announces, casually rechecking the message for a fourth time before leading the way down a cobblestone path to a red door that says 4C.

"They're in 4C," she says and Kimberly follows her.

Hesitantly, Trini knocks twice and resists the urge to round it out to three times, instantly regretting it. But, her regret is washed away when the door swings open and Gia Moran greets her, yanking her into a hug.

Trini lets out a soft sound of surprise even though she'd expected Gia to get all up in her grill because they haven't seen each other in so long, so she lets herself get buried in Gia's long, blonde hair.

"Trini!" she says and they hug for a beat longer than Kimberly is comfortable with. "Oh my God! It's been so long!"

She's never seen Trini in a moment of genuine affection like this. There'd been the hug she'd given Billy after--

Just _after_.

But that was different.

This is warm. Familiar. Lingering. Aching with an unspoken intimacy that Kimberly doesn't want to read into right now.

They pull away.

Trini just rolls her eyes, exasperated by the fact that Gia's wearing black leggings when it's hot as all hell outside. At least her shirt is pale yellow. "Like a year," Trini automatically corrects. "Not that long."

"Whatever, half-pint," Gia brushes off. Trini frowns. She's only about Kimberly's height, and Trini's not _that_ much shorter than Kimberly. Like five inches. But, the nickname is doomed to stick, thanks to Jake.

"You must be Kim," she says, then points to herself. "Gia. I've heard so much about you."

That floors Kimberly enough that she hesitates for reaching out a hand for Gia to shake. Instead, she's pulled into a hug, too. It doesn't last nearly as long.

Trini scratches at her hairline and stops before she goes any further, tucking her hand into her pocket, and reminds herself to get Gia back later for saying that out loud. She looks away as Gia hugs Kimberly, just in case Kimberly glances at her for the comment.

When they head inside, Gia tries to tidy up the only desk in the living room but doesn't really succeed. It's a nice apartment. Clean and white. A couch is crammed against the far wall, pointed towards a television. There's a desk covered in loose papers and thick textbooks. A hallway cuts through the wall on the right and she can just see the edges of a kitchen from where she's standing.

"Sorry for the mess," she says, apologetically, half-tilting her head at Trini, knowingly, "One of my summer classes just finished last week, and I didn't want to clean up, I guess." She laughs a little, edging on awkwardness, which Trini isn't used to from Gia.

But, then again, Kimberly is also right here, and there's a lot of things Gia can't talk to her about in front of Kimberly. It's understandable.

"No worries," Trini says, flippantly; it doesn't bother her if she doesn't let it, "Where's Emma?"

A small smile graces Gia's face. She tucks a lock of blonde hair behind her ear. Trini almost grins and starts making fun of her, but Kimberly is still right there, and she can't chance any of this getting back to Zack. He has to keep thinking she has no soul and wouldn't hesitate to end him in a blink. "She's at the studio right now, finishing up a shoot, but she'll be home soon. You _have_ to see her portfolio now, it's _so_ good."

Emma must be the other friend. Kimberly glances between the two girls.

Gia takes them on the grand tour, which isn't really grand at all, but this is Gia and Emma's first apartment together, way better than the freshman year dorms Gia had complained to her about. It's nice, cozy. There's a back patio with a sliding glass door, open to the evening breeze despite the heat. Kimberly stands on it and looks out at the road beyond the apartment complex. Behind her, Trini and Gia are talking quietly in the kitchen where Gia has several take-out menus spread out on the counter for them to choose from.

"So," she hears Gia say quietly, "is Kim the one you…?"

Trini hisses something to cut her off. Kimberly can't quite hear it.

The sun is beginning to set in the distance, spreading out a warm orange glow on the grass, on the sparse trees. Kimberly crosses her arms over her stomach and takes a deep breath. Holds it. Lets it go.

.

After, Kimberly goes out to the back patio but leaves the sliding door slightly ajar, and that's when Gia grills Trini over the kitchen countertop scattered with takeout menus without the hesitance of a witness.

"How've you been?" Gia asks, quietly, nodding to let the rest of her question fade into the air.

Trini gets it, regardless. "Fine," she answers, short and sweet, "Okay."

"Are you sure? That was two answers in a row."

Trini just scowls at Gia, who shrugs in response. "Yeah, I'm sure. Everything's normal."

Gia pauses for a moment then nods. "Alright, well, let me know if you need anything, okay? Like, if you don't want a hug or whatever."

"Everything's normal," she repeats, sighing softly, "I'm not fragile." Even better, she's been through a ton of shit since last seeing Gia, so she's got even thicker skin on top of what Gia knows her to be like. "I don't care if you hug me. Just don't do it, like, all the time. Save that grossness for Emma."

Rolling her eyes, Gia ends up smiling at the mention of Emma's name, and Trini takes a menu from the countertop, whacking Gia with it, who dodges away just in time.

"Does she… know?" Gia asks, coming around the counter to stand next to Trini, her voice conspiratorially low.

" _No,_ " Trini says, firmly, and Gia drops it.

Instead, Gia follows up with: "So, is Kim the one you…?"

Trini harshly shushes her before she can finish the question, shooting a furtive glance out to the patio at Kimberly, who doesn't turn around. "Stop it."

Holding her hands up in surrender, Gia relents. "Fine, fine. Have you picked out something yet?"

"I'm the worst person for this," Trini mutters, huffing, then shuts her eyes and drops her index finger onto a random menu. She takes a peek and sees that she's chosen a Vietnamese restaurant.

"That wasn't so hard, was it?" Gia looks a little smug.

Trini scowls at her. "More to it than just being indecisive."

"Baby steps," Gia replies and grabs the menu, flipping through it to find something to order.

.

Emma is a striking young woman with a curtain of dark hair. She stumbles into the apartment after the food arrives and she's nice and loud and shakes Kimberly's hand in both of her own before sitting on the floor at Gia's feet. Kimberly has taken the far edge of the couch and has done nothing more than play with her fried rice for the past twenty minutes. Trini keeps shooting her these weird looks, like she wants to ask what's wrong but doesn't have the guts.

"What are you guys doing exactly?" Emma asks them through a bite of an egg roll. "Gia didn't tell me the specifics. Just something about a romantic, lesbian road trip."

Kimberly's face feels so hot that she wouldn't be surprised if it were actually on fire.

Trini chokes on her food. Swallows. "No!" she says, too quickly. Too eager to shut it down.

_Jesus, could she be more gone on you?_

Isn't that what Zack said all those weeks ago? And yet, here they are. Here Trini is, so quick to put a stop to that train of thought. That this could be anything more than two friends on a ridiculously long drive together.

Emma snorts. Gia nudges her shoulder with her knee.

"That's not what it--" Trini begins, and Kimberly sets her food down on the table beside the couch. Gets to her feet.

The others look at her.

"Um," she says, feeling caught. Stuck. "I forgot something in my car."

And she knows how suspicious that looks, how ridiculously juvenile, but she can't stay in that room with them one more minute. Not like this.

.

There's a long silence after Kimberly leaves, one that Trini can feel in her stomach and her brain. She looks at Gia and Emma. They all glance at each other, unsure of what to do.

Emma breathes out, mutters, "Shit, I didn't mean it to sound like that--"

Gia interrupts, to her, "Trini--"

Trini cuts her off, quickly, by bringing her hands to her scalp, her fingertips just barely brushing against the skin there. Gia sharply inhales, tensing and moving forward just slightly, almost ready to spring and stop her, but she stops when Emma holds out a hand to stop her and falters. Nevertheless, Trini sees it, anyway, and pulls her hands away from her head, runs a hand through her hair, instead, tousling it a bit.

"It's fine," she says, quietly, and the air has changed. A heavy secret between the three of them, just for them, the air now different between her, Gia, and Emma, not the same… she doesn't know how to describe it, but having Kimberly there had been different. She knows Gia and Emma mean well and genuinely do want Kimberly there, but it is hard when they've got so much else behind them that Kimberly wasn't privy to.

She stands up, straightening out her clothes and sighing, heavily. "I'm gonna go talk to her."

.

Outside, the sun is down. It's hot, still, and there are bugs singing in the grass, the bushes. She doesn't go to her car. Instead, she stands there, right outside the door with her arms crossed and breathes in deeply through her nose. Exhales through her mouth.

The door opens behind her after a moment and she knows who it is before it clicks shut again, before she turns around.

"What's going on with you?" Trini asks it quietly, like it's meant to be a secret or a surprise.

Her shoulder brushes against Kimberly's as she comes to stand beside her.

"Nothing," Kimberly says, and there's a beat of silence where she thinks Trini might be accepting this lie.

But then:

"Can you just...can you be real for a minute?"

It sounds hurt. Aching. Something like guilt throbs at the base of Kimberly's throat.

The problem is that she doesn't know what to say. That she's jealous because she's certain that Gia is an ex- _something_ to Trini. That there's a girl that Trini was probably _with_ in some sense, who she's on good enough terms with to stay the night with out of the blue. And that must mean something. Bad breakups don't usually equal niceties and bed-and-breakfast type scenarios.

She knows that it was the move. That Trini moved and that's why it's over and if she hadn't moved it might not be, despite whatever age difference they have. Despite however they met. She knows that if Trini had stayed here with her family, she wouldn't be the Yellow Ranger. Kimberly wouldn't know her at all. They wouldn't be standing here together.

And Trini might still be dating Gia.

She wants to hate one of them, both of them. But she can't. Has no real foundation to.

"I'm jealous, okay?"

She regrets it the moment she says it. It sounds more childish than she'd intended and it lingers far too long on the air between them. The walls of the apartments are thin. She can hear someone down the row watching TV. The one across from them has their lights on and some loud, weird country song playing from deep inside.

"Jealous of... _what_?"

Trini sounds like she can't believe what she's just had to ask. Like all of this is happening in a dream or something.

Kimberly laughs, humorlessly. "I don't even know," she says. "Of...of Gia, I guess."

Finally, she braves a glance in Trini's direction. For her part, Trini makes eye contact, but her eyebrows are furrowed. She's frowning. Kimberly can tell that she's trying to piece together what this might mean in her head.

"Do you…" she starts, then coughs in her hand. She shakes her head. "Do you...like... _Emma_ or something?"

"Jesus," Kimberly says because how can she really not understand? How can she not _get it_ ? It's ridiculous. Completely. It's like she can't breathe. She wants to say, _I'm jealous because of what she is to you,_ or explain it in a way that Trini might understand.

Beyond even that, she wants to say that she's jealous and she has no reason to be. No right. Because her and Trini are _just friends._ Just teammates. They can't--

They can't be _this_ to each other. No matter how much she wants it.

And, God--

She _wants_ it.

But she doesn't say any of that. She doesn't say anything at all because her resolve shatters somewhere inside of her and then she's taking one quick step so that her and Trini are pressed together and she's grabbing Trini's face. She's grabbing her face and kissing her. She'd meant it to be thorough and determined, but it's soft instead. Careful.

She gives Trini enough room to pull away.

Except Trini doesn't pull away. Instead, her hands fly to Kimberly's hips, tugging her impossibly closer and she kisses her back. She _kisses her back_. And then it's tongue and teeth and the distant spiciness of whatever it was that Trini had ordered for herself for dinner.

It doesn't last nearly long enough. Eventually, Trini pulls away, keeping her hands on Kimberly's hips.

"Oh," she says quietly.

Kimberly smiles, in spite of herself. In spite of everything -- not _knowing_ what this means for them. "Yeah," she says. "Oh."

.

Inside, Emma and Gia are washing dishes and talking quietly in the kitchen.

Trini hesitates by the door and then rushes to where she set her backpack in the corner and starts tugging out her pajamas, her contact case, her hairbrush. She stands up and doesn't look at Kimberly as she darts down the hallway towards the bathroom.

Kimberly watches her go. There isn't anything else for her to do, really.

.

In the bathroom, as Trini sets her pajamas, contact case, and hairbrush down on the counter, she grips the counter and avoids looking at herself in the mirror, her whole body tingling. She briefly touches her fingertips to her lips, still in some kind of shock that that'd just happened, but what descends on her mind, naturally, isn't happiness, but worry that now there's a whole other weight on her shoulders and what if Kimberly reacts badly, inevitably, when Trini comes out with the truth because there's no way she can continue on this road trip for the rest of a week without saying something, right? She'll have a breakdown at some point, so far away from home and her family, and Kimberly won't know what to do because she won't know what's going on and--

Trini pulls her phone out of her pocket and texts Gia, asking her to come to the bathroom. It only takes a few seconds and then Gia is lightly knocking on the door; Trini opens it and leaves her standing in the doorway.

"You okay?" she asks, softly, arms crossed, leaning against the doorframe. It's not an unfamiliar scene for them to be in, her at the sink, freaking out, and Gia watching -- or, sometimes, one of Gia and Emma's other friends like Troy or Noah. She had liked Noah, always rationalizing her thoughts out with her, kinda like how she knows Billy would do if he knew.

"Yeah," Trini manages, "I just… I need someone here right now." She starts taking out her contacts then changes into her pajamas, Gia glancing away out of courtesy when she does, not that she's ever minded.

"Emma feels terrible," Gia says while staring at the shower curtain, "and I shouldn't have told her in the first place that this was, well, a… 'romantic, lesbian road trip'." It's a little weird, a little different, but the three of them definitely would've made that joke had Kimberly not been there, anyway, but it's just that Kimberly had feelings, feelings that Trini hadn't spent too much time dwelling on because she's too busy taking care of herself, and--

"It's okay." Trini pulls on a pair of shorts and struggles through her t-shirt, accidentally putting a hand through the hole for her head while Gia snorts. When she's done, she turns around, leaning against the counter to face Gia. "We kissed," she confesses, quietly.

Gia raises her eyebrows, and Trini immediately shushes her. There's still a big, delighted grin on Gia's face, though, that Trini can't do anything about. "That's good, right?" she asks after a beat when Trini doesn't say anything.

"I mean… yeah," she sighs, scratching at her head then sheepishly stopping when Gia gives her a stern look, "Sorry. I just… I don't know, I asked her to be honest when we were talking outside and… _I'm_ not being honest with her--"

"Trini," Gia says in the same firm mothering tone that she's gotten used to by now, "It's not that clean-cut."

Trini throws up her hands. "Well, I want her to be honest, and I can't even do that myself. Right? Isn't that it?"

"It's not about being honest," Gia counters, "It's about being ready. You're not… lying to her."

"But, I am."

"You're not, I promise. It's not the same as lying."

Trini scratches at her nose. "Yeah," she agrees, noncommittally.

"You tell her when you're ready."

.

Trini insists that Kimberly take the couch, and ends up in a pile of blankets on the floor beside it. The lights are off and it's dark and Kimberly stares at the ceiling, running her fingers over her lips and breathing quietly. Deeply.

"Do you have an alarm set?" Trini asks.

They'd gotten ready for bed separately and said quick goodnights to Emma and Gia after their respective beds had been set up. All of that had been done in relative silence and a long time has passed since then. They've just been lying there in the darkness. Pointedly not talking.

"Yeah," Kimberly says, thankful for a reason to stop touching her lips.

"Okay."

"Yeah."

Silence again. Just as suffocating.

"So," Trini says softly. She coughs again. "So, um...we kissed."

No part of her sounds disgusted. Instead, it's said simply. Hushed awe. Relief nearly splits Kimberly's chest in two.

"Um, yeah," she returns. "Yeah, we did."

"It was nice."

"Yeah, it was."

"Do you wanna…?" Trini trails off for a moment. Coughs again. "Do you wanna maybe do that again sometime?"

A ridiculous question maybe, but it makes something in Kimberly's veins sing.

"Yeah," she says. "Totally."

"Oh, cool." A pause. "Me too."

"Awesome."

Emma laughs in the bedroom at something unrelated. Hopefully. Gia shushes her. A dog barks outside.

"Well, goodnight," Trini says quietly and then there's the sound of her turning onto her side, shifting her blankets.

"Night," Kimberly returns.

She doesn't sleep. Can't. Doesn't mind.

.

Trini doesn't sleep that night even though she'd snuck her medicine out of her backpack and taken it before going to bed. It's not that Kimberly is presumably asleep just feet away from her on the couch, although it could be. It's that she has insomnia and hates it and bores a hole into the ceiling because, if anything, she should be having the best sleep of her life tonight because Kimberly kissed her and she kissed Kimberly back and--

In the morning, she yawns and folds the blankets Emma had loaned her in a neat pile and leaves the pillow on top then goes to take a shower. When she gets out, Gia and Emma are up and in the kitchen, making coffee. It feels familiar, but Troy, Noah, Jake, and Orion aren't there, so it's not exactly the same as it'd been before. Things have changed, but change is good. Change is growth.

.

Kimberly’s alarm wakes her from a light doze early the next morning to find Trini already gone, her pile of blankets folded neatly on the floor with the pillow on top. Her backpack is zipped up and resting beside her stuffed shark. There are voices in the kitchen.

Gia's. Emma's. Trini laughs.

Kimberly gets up, folds her own blankets, and gets dressed in the bathroom. Looks at herself in the mirror and tries to figure out why she doesn't look different when she _feels_ different.

.

Trini says her farewells to Gia and Emma, knowing that she'll still keep in touch because she carries their old friend group with her wherever she goes, and squeezes Kimberly's hand as she takes their stuff to the car.

It’s an odd fumble-catch that Kimberly isn’t anticipating, still buzzing from that spark of _something_ as she’d watched Trini hug the other girls goodbye -- lingering on Gia. Not as deep as last night. In an instant, it’s gone, the pressure from Trini’s fingers erasing it completely.

They head to a McDonald's drive-thru for breakfast, and Trini can't stop staring at Kimberly, aware that she can feel Trini's eyes on her. She reaches out, fingers gently turning Kimberly's chin toward her, and leans over, pressing a soft kiss against her lips.

"Sorry," she murmurs because she says it too much -- to herself and to everyone else.

Kimberly kisses her again. Quick. "What for?"

Trini pulls back but keeps her hand on Kimberly's cheek then gently threads her fingertips through Kimberly's hair that's starting to reach her shoulders again. Thinks about how the motion feels nice, has no underlying anxiety attached to it. There's a lot of things she could actually be sorry for -- running, being closed off, Billy's death, everything bad she's ever done that keeps her up at three in the morning because that's just how it is, sometimes -- but, right now, it's nothing.

"I don't know," she admits.

Kimberly laughs and then their food is being passed out the window to them. She hands the bag, the drinks, to Trini and they eat parked in the parking lot, watching cars rumble past on the road up ahead.

"Don't be sorry for that," Kimberly says, easily, "That's stupid."

That's exactly what Trini had thought, but it feels a little nicer hearing it from someone else, even if Kimberly doesn't know what it means to her. She munches on her hash brown and nods. "Cool."

There's another kiss -- greasy from their breakfast -- before Kimberly starts off in the direction highlighted by her GPS. It's warm and quick and not nearly enough, but Kimberly isn't sure if it could be. If it ever will be.

.

They play a driving playlist Trini had made through Kimberly's aux cord as they enter New Mexico and sing along to three Walk the Moon songs in a row.

"How many of their songs are on here?" Kimberly asks, hands gripping the wheel.

Trini smiles at her, rocks her sunglasses down her nose so that she can make eye contact. "Not enough," is her answer, and she flicks the shades back up to cover her eyes.

Kimberly laughs. Of course she does. What else can she do?

.

She adds three more Walk the Moon songs to her road trip playlist right after Kimberly makes a teasing comment about it. There's never enough Walk the Moon on any playlist.

Except for _Shut Up and Dance._ She can do without that one.

.

Her phone rings around eleven and it's Jason's picture that pops up on the screen. Trini answers, turns on speakerphone because Kimberly's still driving. There's the sound of scuffling in response to her annoyed, "What?" and then Zack's voice comes through.

"Howdy doo, lil ladies. How's the drive? Kill anyone yet?"

"Why would they have killed someone?" Billy asks from the background.

"It's a joke, dude," Zack replies. "I'm kidding."

"Death isn't funny."

A pause. "Shit, man. I'm sorry."

Laughter. Billy's.

"That was mean!" Zack shouts and there's another scuffle.

It sounds like the phone is dropped. After a moment, Jason's voice. "Break it up, guys! Come on!"

There's feedback on the line that tells her they're on speakerphone and her heartbeat is frantic, unyielding. She's certain they already know. That it's why they called, but she can't prove it and waiting around for someone to ask is killing her. Her hands shake.

"Trini and I...um...sorta made out," she hears herself say, voice pitched high. "Like three times."

Trini is looking at her. Kimberly spares her a glance, and then looks back at the road.

Silence on the other line.

And then Trini says, "I really don't think that counted as making out. If we made out, you'd know. Trust me, Hart."

She doesn't sound annoyed or hurt or even surprised, really, about her outburst.

It was bound to happen eventually.

There's a moment of hesitation and then a burst of sound from the boys, all of them trying to speak at once.

Zack: "Holy shit!"

Jason: "Congratulations."

Billy: "I'm so happy for you two!"

A smattering of applause that might be from Billy.

Either way, not exactly what she'd been expecting.

It's a beautiful afternoon. Not a cloud in the sky. At some point, Trini's playlist started over and she can just hear it from where the volume is lowered so that they can hear the boys. Trini's hand is warm when she lifts it, rests it on Kimberly's shoulder.

Trini laughs, shakes her head. Kimberly smiles. Grips the steering wheel.

Keeps driving.

.

When they stop for a break and to switch drivers, Trini suggests, "Let's watch the stars tonight."

"You know," she continues at Kimberly's questioning look, "Because we're supposed to be looking for, like, UFOs. Or whatever."

"You really think it's aliens coming to get us?" Kimberly asks, leaning against the top of the car.

She's never had anxieties about aliens until she found out they were real, so, naturally, yes. "No idea," Trini responds, "But I'm _hoping_ we didn't come all this way just for it to turn out to be dumb weather balloons or something. I'll personally storm Area 51 myself if that turns out to be true."

Kimberly throws her head back and laughs, amused. "By yourself?"

Trini holds up the keys. "I'm the one driving," she points out.

"So, you'd be dragging me along to fight all of whatever's in Area 51."

"As if you wouldn't willingly come along?" She raises her eyebrows.

Kimberly smiles at her. "Yeah, of course, I'd come along."

.

As night falls, they pull into a rest area, still in New Mexico. They'll cross into Texas borders tomorrow morning, and Trini knows it's just a hell of a long drive after. She's not too excited to be back since the last road trip _out_ of Texas was long enough, but that's a problem for tomorrow morning Trini. The rest area is a large parking lot under a shaded pavillion, leading out to a grassy clearing, all next to a small diner that's definitely seen quite a bit of traffic. They could get breakfast there in the morning, easy, convenient.

Trini parks the car, pops the trunk, and takes her blanket and stuffed shark to lay out in the grass with Kimberly. Here, on the road, there's a clear sky, not that Angel Grove doesn't have one, but she'd grown up deep in urban downtown Houston, which means for most of her life, she hadn't seen a starry sky for, well, awhile. Pollution and all that.

This is the romantic night she's seen in every teen romance movie ever and there's a kiss waiting for her if she says the right, sweet words to Kimberly, but this is the real world, and in the real world, there's real problems to handle before she can get to that. And, like, also, aliens.

She rolls over on her side, tucking her hands under her cheek, her head resting against the stuffed shark, to look at Kimberly, who mimics her movement. "There's something I have to tell you," she says, quietly.

Kimberly blinks at her in the dark moonlight. "Okay."

Trini knows she shouldn't, but she has to get it out because it'll bother her endlessly until it turns into crippling anxiety, and she can't risk that on a long haul trip like this with Kimberly. She can't make Kimberly suddenly have to handle that burden. "Um, it's about me and Gia."

"Oh," Kimberly says, clearly expecting something else or, at least, not expecting Trini to bring that back up, and Trini knows she should shut up right about now, but, "That's okay. I'm over it."

"No, it's not about that--"

"Trini, really, it's fine."

The tone in Kimberly's voice says she probably shouldn't push it any more, but it's either that and she ends tonight thinking about how she could've done better and hating herself for the rest of the trip or she says something now. Reaching out, Trini hesitantly takes Kimberly's hand in her own, giving her plenty of room to pull away like Kimberly had with their kiss.

"No," she insists, "I _have_ to tell you. I just-- I asked you to be real with me, so I wanna be real with you." What she means is _I'll explode if I don't tell you,_ and Kimberly might hear something different, but whatever she goes interpret it as, she relaxes, slightly, and nods for Trini to continue.

Trini takes a deep breath. She remembers ripping Kimberly's locker door off of its hinges, how much it had meant to her that she was doing the same after years earlier Troy had stepped in for her in the hallways of Central High School. The campfire and "I've never said any of this out loud," because she hadn't, not to her old friends in Phoenix because it'd just been something unspoken between her, Gia, and Emma and the boys hadn't asked, either. They all watched her fall apart, helped her get back together, but then she'd had to move and start all over. That'd been the worst part, even worse than the therapy or the drug tests or the moments she can't remember but knows happened.

"I wasn't doing well a couple of years ago," she starts, quietly, "There was… some bad stuff I was going through. Things I-- I'm not ready to talk about right now, but… Gia and our friends were there for me. I wouldn't have lived to move to Angel Grove if they hadn't." Her word choice is deliberate, and it's when she stops talking that the gravity of it hits her, abruptly. Crying in Emma's arms, shoving a makeshift survival kit into her backpack as if she'd make it beyond Phoenix's city limits before turning back out of obsessive need, thinking that she'd never live to see graduation because two years sounds so, so horribly long for her life to begin.

She doesn't realize she's starting crying until Kimberly leans over and gently wipes her thumb underneath Trini's right eye, brushing away a tear. Kimberly is about to pull her hand away but Trini grabs her hand first. She brings the back of Kimberly's hand to her lips, softly kissing each knuckle, her grin growing wider as Kimberly blushes increasingly every time lips touches skin.

"So, that's that," Trini finishes as a murmur.

Kimberly scoots closer on the blanket until their knees are slightly touching. Trini tenses, just for a second, shifting. Alarm flickers in Kimberly's eyes. No doubt Kimberly had caught all the times Trini had made sure not to touch her before, and now, it's coming back to bite her. "Sorry, am I too close? Can I…?" She motions at the shark Trini is resting her head on; to move closer, she has to put her head on it.

"No, no," she answers, quickly, "You're not. I just… I have to get used to this." Her chest feels a little heavy, a little too excited, so she takes a deep breath, waits for her heartbeat to calm down. "And, yeah, you can."

It's with some visible reluctance that Kimberly rests her head on the shark Noah had given Trini a few weeks before she left Phoenix.

Kimberly whispers, inches away from Trini, "I feel terrible."

"What?" Trini's brow furrows. She shifts again. "No, it's okay, just gimme a sec--"

"Not about this, Trin." Kimberly shakes her head. "About Gia. I was wrongly jealous and--"

It amuses her a little, still, to think about Kimberly being jealous over _Gia_ like Trini ever had a chance, but that's a whole bunch of history that Kimberly isn't privy to, so she bites back a smug smile. Trini half-shrugs, finally finding comfort in her new position, one arm underneath the shark, her free hand holding Kimberly's, and Kimberly's knee warmly brushing against her thigh. "It's natural," she counters, "Jealousy's natural. I mean, I… I never liked Gia like _that,_ but, you know, you're _allowed_ to feel whatever you wanna feel."

"Hm," Kimberly hums, nodding slightly. Trini considers the conversation over pretty much. It hadn't been… as bad as she presumed it'd be. "Thanks for telling me," Kimberly says, gently, after a moment, "and sharing that with me."

"Thanks for listening," Trini replies and leans over to give Kimberly a soft, warm kiss that she meets her halfway for.

.

They stop in New Mexico, and it's dark. Nothing but spinning stars above them when Trini spreads out the blanket on the dry grass at the side of the empty road. Kimberly lies beside her and there are a million things she wants to ask, but Trini starts speaking first and Kimberly--

She listens.

Nods.

Feels stupid. Then guilty. Then both.

"I feel terrible," she says honestly, when it's over, when that's the only thing she can focus on at _all_. But then Trini is there. Trini touches her.

Trini _kisses_ her.

And, well--

It's hard to feel terrible about that.

.

It takes all of their effort, but the two of them go back to the car to sleep for the night, despite how tempting it is to just fall asleep on the blanket under the stars. Trini insists on taking the driver's seat and reclines it all the way back while Kimberly languidly sprawls across the backseat; she thinks about them sharing the backseat, but one, it's too cramped, and, two, she doesn't know if she could handle that.

Trini jolts awake at the vibration of her phone sitting on the console, and she quickly picks it up, turning the alarm off. She lets Kimberly set her own alarm but keeps her own on vibrate, just in case, because it's always just in case. Glancing at the backseat, she sees that Kimberly is still asleep, her mouth half-open, strands of hair covering her eyes, and an arm dangling off of the seat, fingers barely touching the floor.

She's so beautiful.

Chuckling to herself, Trini takes a picture with her phone and sends it to Kimberly, hearing the soft _bzzz_ notification from Kimberly's phone, probably on the floor. _You're perfecr,_ she writes then hits send before she has a chance to fix her typo. Mm. Fuck.

 ** _trini_** _you're perfecr_

 ** _trini_** _fuck perfect*_

 ** _trini_** _you know what? you're perfecr, too_

"What th' hell is that?" Kimberly groans, drowsily, and Trini looks up to see Kimberly stretching and pushing her hair out of her face. "I swear, if it's Zack with another Vine compilation, we're going to drive back to Angel Grove and kill him."

Trini just smiles at her. "Could be."

To Zack, she just ominously texts: _run._

.

The next morning, Kimberly wakes to a crick in her neck -- painful and clinging. She rubs her hand against it, tries to warm the tense muscle with friction, but it doesn't help.

She has a text message. Actually, she has three, and she can't stop smiling when she reads them.

At breakfast, Trini holds her hand across the table and Kimberly spends thirty minutes fumbling with her fork, left-handed. She doesn't pull her hand away. She doesn't stop smiling, either, but it doesn't feel like a loss.

In the car, Trini drives and Kimberly calls Jason. It rings three times before he answers, but when he does, he sounds tired and Zack is there, too, already teasing them.

Billy's voice is in the background and a tinny noise that she thinks might be Alpha.

"Tell Trini I'm gonna kill her when she gets back," Zack says over the sound of Jason shushing him. " _If_ she gets back."

Kimberly turns her head to look at Trini, sunglasses perched on her nose, hands on the steering wheel. There's a stone in her stomach about this -- some fluttering in her chest that isn't new. Trini catches her staring after a moment and turns her head, smiles. Kimberly smiles back.

"Tell her yourself," she retorts.

Trini mouths, _What?_

Kimberly shrugs. Rolls her eyes. Looks out the window at the passing shrubbery, the bright blue, cloudless sky swirling above them.

The call goes on for another three minutes. Jason rambles on about them remaining safe, remaining low-profile. Billy yells a greeting in the background.

When she hangs up, Kimberly presses her head into the cushion of her seat and looks at Trini. "Can I…?" she asks, when she's sliding her hand over towards Trini's knee.

Trini smiles without looking at her. "Yeah," she says, and when Kimberly rests her hand over the bare skin of her lower thigh, she drops her own to rest on top of it.

.

They laugh about Zack's frantic, confused twenty-six texts over breakfast at the cozy little diner next to the rest stop, sharing a booth and awkwardly holding hands, Trini's left in Kimberly's right. It makes eating a little hard for Kimberly since Trini still has use of her right hand while Kimberly doesn't, but she'd made up for it, quickly, with a few kisses to Kimberly's cheeks and nose. Their waitress, a kind, young girl, probably their age, whose name tag says Shelby, smiles at them holding hands while eating, says they look cute together, and Trini's heart feels like it's going to burst out of her chest.

It's a great start to a great morning, something she'd forgotten the feeling of after so long.

.

They stop for gas just over the Texas border. Inside, Kimberly's arms are frozen and wet from the condensation of the three water bottles she'd tugged from the refrigerator in the back. There's a newspaper by the front when the cashier is ringing her up.

_MYSTERIOUS LIGHTS IN THE SKY._

She grabs a copy and sets it on the counter by the water bottles.

"What's that?" Trini asks, looking over the edge of her sunglasses at the newspaper Kimberly is holding up with her free hand, plastic bag dangling from the other.

She turns it so that Trini can read it. "More close encounters," she teases, but she's only half-joking. With Rita -- _before_ Rita -- there'd been the feeling that something was coming. Something big. Maybe it had been the nightmare that Zordon had forced all five of them into or the constant reminders from both him and his pet android that the end of times were near, but Kimberly had spent the two weeks leading up to that fight sick to her stomach.

Now, though--

There's nothing. This whole mission would feel worthless if it weren't for the way Trini is smiling at her.

In the car, she takes a picture of the cover and sends it to Billy, tapping her finger on the dashboard as she waits for a reply. She doesn't read it for herself, deeming it unworthy of the motion sickness doing so will surely cause. She feels silly for even buying it.

Billy sends her back a string of emojis. A cow, the clapping hands, and three aliens.

"I have...no idea what that's supposed to mean," she says when she tells Trini, laughing. "Is that good or bad?"

"Clapping is usually good, I think," Trini tells her. "With Billy at least. If it's Zack, it's usually sarcastic."

"Zack only ever texts me weird pick-up lines," Kimberly confesses. "Sarcastic emoji use would be a relief."

It's meant to be a joke, but Trini frowns a little before smiling. Just a dip in the corner of her lips, really, but Kimberly catches it before it's gone and sets her phone down in the cupholder so that she can turn to look at her, leg bent oddly with her back against the passenger side door.

"What?" she asks.

Trini crinkles her nose. "What do you mean, ‘what'?"

"Why do you look like someone just stabbed your puppy?"

"Okay. Morbid. Jeez."

Kimberly rolls her eyes, but there's no real malice behind the action. Trini is a textbook emotional runner. If it was a relay, she'd win every time. The last thing they need to do with another five or so days in the car together is to let this settle.

"Come on," she coaxes. "What's wrong?"

Trini sighs. There's a pause, just a moment where she seems to be steeling herself for whatever she's about to say next. Then, "Zack flirts with you?"

Oh. There it is.

"Well, yeah," Kimberly says. "But he flirts with all of us. Especially Jason. You never noticed?"

It seems hard to believe, to be sure. Zack is never exactly subtle in his joking pursuits of them. The way he goes at Jason sometimes is practically the flirting equivalent hitting someone over the head with a baseball bat, and just as painful.

Trini shakes her head.

"You've never noticed him flirting with you?" Kimberly presses, leaning forward a little and resting one of her hands on the gearshift to get closer. She resists the urge to poke Trini's cheek or grab her shoulder and reminds herself to keep her distance. Just in case.

"Never," Trini says.

Kimberly laughs. "You're not very observant, huh? What else haven't you noticed?"

There's another pause, during which Kimberly slumps back against the door and crosses her arms. Trini glances at her, then back at the road, and Kimberly can't see her eyes behind the sunglasses, but maybe that's what makes it okay for her to say the next part.

"A lot of things when you're around."

And, well--

She doesn't exactly know what she's supposed to say to that.

.

Trini has someone around San Antonio. She tells Kimberly as such when they're having lunch in a McDonald's off the highway. It's offhanded and slight -- the kind of tone she'd take if she were talking about seeing a dog on the way to school or not finishing her Biology homework or something. That's what's surprising about the whole thing. She doesn't throw any weight to the information at all.

She just says, "So, my aunt offered to house us for a night or two. If you want."

Like Kimberly could even say no to that sort of thing. In the time that she's known Trini, she's been over to her house countless times, but had to learn what she could from context clues and family portraits that her mom has plastered all over the walls. She doesn't even share information about her parents. Before she'd shown up at Trini's doorstep to study for finals, she hadn't even known that she had siblings. Let alone two of them.

An elusive Texas-bound aunt that's kind enough to offer them housing is too intriguing an offer to pass up.

"Yeah," she says quickly, biting her tongue when Trini looks up at her. That sounded too eager for sure. She swallows around a french fry. "Yeah, that sounds cool."

Much chiller.

"Okay," Trini says, and she has her eyebrow quirked in that infuriatingly attractive way she does sometimes. She looks amused. "Cool."

Kimberly nods and tries to act nonchalant, glancing out the window at the busy street just past the parking lot. "Does she know I'm with you? Or...?" She trails off, settles for letting the, _Does she think you're doing some sort of weird cross-country walkabout on your own?,_ go unsaid.

Trini shrugs and chews on the tip of her straw. "I mentioned it so probably, yeah."

"Oh. Cool."

That eyebrow quirk again. "Yep. Cool."

Kimberly frowns. "Stop looking at me like that."

It moves impossibly higher and now she's smirking too. Just the left corner of her lips. "How?" she asks, as if she's completely clueless to the effect looking like that has.

"You know how," Kimberly tells her, rolling her eyes for good measure.

"Tell me."

They stare at each other for a long moment, each of them sizing the other up. Like some sort of game. It's the kind of thing that Kimberly never would have thought the two of them would be playing just a few months ago. Mostly, she never thought she'd be _here._

"You're so goddamn annoying sometimes," she sighs, shaking her head and Trini lets out a bark of unbothered laughter. Her hand finds Kimberly on the tabletop and their fingers slide together, warm and connected.

"But…?" Trini prods.

Another eye roll. At this rate, her eyes are bound to get stuck. "But you're still so hot."

Trini laughs again, caught and young and overjoyed at the confession. "I knew it," she says, and when Kimberly makes a face, she shrugs. "Okay, I didn't know that."

"That's what I thought."

.

On the way to her aunt's house, Trini insists on driving the last stretch while Kimberly naps for a bit because she wants to be alone with her thoughts for just a bit. It's hard to feel alone when she's constantly around Kimberly, and it's not that she _wants_ to be alone but the closer they get to San Antonio, the further she gets into Texas, the more she needs a moment to breathe.

She's missed out on a lot of things she'd promised herself she'd do when she was younger -- stealing her dad's car and driving to San Antonio where she knew there'd be a guest bedroom waiting for her, releasing that stress and cutting the pull of her parents from off of her back, starting over somewhere else. But things like that are never easy, and it'd been easier to tell herself she'd do it than actually doing it.

And maybe her life would be different. No, it definitely would've been. Maybe, without her parents to support her, she'd drop out of school and work to survive for the rest of her life and maybe she'd have felt fulfilled, maybe she wouldn't have.

But she wouldn't have moved to Angel Grove, then, and become a Power Ranger. Dug a yellow power coin out of a rock wall, survived a train crash, an alien invasion, and most of all, her demons once again.

Wouldn't have met Kimberly.

So, maybe it's okay that she didn't get to do everything she wanted to. This is okay, too. She's still in a car, driving to San Antonio, older, more sure of herself but still with time to figure the rest of it out.

Trini reaches over and slips her hand into Kimberly's and smiles to herself when Kimberly unconsciously curls her fingers around hers back.

.

Trini's aunt is younger than Kimberly pictured, and a good deal taller than Trini. She lives in a small house in a quiet suburb outside of San Antonio and there are exactly two cactuses in her prim front yard. She answers the doorbell less than ten seconds after it rings and she's smiling already once the door opens.

"You made it!" she says, bright white teeth and curly dark hair. She tugs Trini into a hug and Kimberly is only a little surprised when Trini folds into her arms without complaint. "Did you shrink?"

Trini swats at her shoulder as she pulls away, but she's smiling. "Shut it," she says, and then jerks her thumb back at Kimberly. "This is Kim. Kim, this is my Aunt Steph."

Steph turns her eyes to Kimberly, who has a hand jutted out for her to shake. "Oh, no," she says when she sees it. "We're a hugging family." And, with that, she pulls Kimberly into her arms.

It's a nice hug. Warm. It lasts a bit too long, and then they're being led into the house. The sun is starting to get low outside, spreading warm orange light through the flowing sheer curtains in Steph's front living room. It's nice. Soft purple walls and decorated like something straight out of a Pottery Barn catalogue. Kimberly wonders if maybe she's Trini's mom's sister and then berates herself for thinking that taste in space decoration is genetic.

There's pizza in the kitchen and Steph must know they're tired, because she explains the sleeping situation outright rather than waiting for them to ask.

There's a guest bedroom, she tells them. And her couch pulls out.

Trini offers to take the pull-out, but her eyes dart to meet Kimberly's for a second as they weigh the ramifications of just saying they'll sleep together. It isn't as if they've never shared a bed before. Because they have. Seven times exactly.

Kimberly hasn't been counting, but, yep. Seven times.

And sure, three of those consisted of sharing the couch in Billy's living room when they're movie nights ran a little long, but the other four had been in either of their beds and things hadn't been weird the next morning. Then again, that was before she'd known how soft Trini's lips are, how much pressure she puts into her kisses, how careful the slip of her tongue feels against the roof of Kimberly's mouth.

So they don't say anything. And maybe that's for the best.

They eat standing up on paper plates that Steph pulls from one of the cabinets above her stove. Steph asks about school and their summers and Kimberly answers the questions for the most part because Trini is quiet when she's tired.

It's nice. Steph has Trini's eyes somehow -- that little crinkle in their corners when she laughs. Kimberly likes her instantly.

.

The pull-out still feels the same as it used to in the past. Soft but old, a little creaky if she shifts just the right way-- Trini rolls over on her side, and the mattress satisfyingly squeaks. It's Alex and Diego's fault from the times they've spent at Steph's, rare family trips to Steph's house that got even rarer once her other uncle -- Steph and her mom's younger brother -- got married and had a kid. Alex and Diego liked Steph more, and, honestly, Trini does, too. Her Uncle Anthony and his family aren't like Steph, are definitely more stable and well-off than Steph, but aren't… cool. Plus, Alex and Diego never got along with their cousin Elizabeth. Kept not wanting to share their toys and then, when they wouldn't budge because they didn't want to "play with _another_ girl," Elizabeth just stole their toys instead. Kid's got spunk, Trini can at least admit that, but she doesn't like their family, still. Having lived through her parents herself, she knows what it looks like when Anthony and his wife act like Elizabeth's "behavioral problems" were something to fix with outside sources instead of something they should've paid more attention to as parents.

She wonders how Elizabeth is doing now, and it reminds her how powerless she used to be to step in and stop the future, tell Anthony and his wife that she and her parents have learned or are learning and that their whole family can't have more than one kid turning out like shit when they have the power to look at each other and fix their mistakes.

And she's still powerless now, still living with her parents, still trapped in her own cage, holding Kimberly's hand through the bars.

It's like the warmth of Phoenix, of Gia and Emma and their friend group -- their _family_ \-- never happened or, at the very least, once she left Phoenix, Angel Grove hit the restart button and she had to start over. Had to learn how to run away again. The rollercoaster of her and her parents just goes around on another loop -- drug tests abruptly sprung on her because her mom thinks she'll catch her spiraling if she does it without warning (not that she ever does), helicopter parenting, texts on the hour or every few hours if she's lucky but she rarely is. Suffocation and smothering because instead of caring deeply and genuinely, her mom just went to the other extreme -- worrying and hovering.

Trini breathes in, breathes out. She can change that, having to always learn how to run away all over again. She doesn't want to leave, doesn't want to think about shaking off Angel Grove like she'd shaken off Houston. Can't even fathom thinking about hitting restart on her and the Rangers. On her and Kimberly.

The mattress creaks as Trini sits up and stares out into the darkness at the faint silhouettes she can see of Steph's furniture.

She can change that tonight.

.

The guest bedroom is small and the guest bed smaller -- just a full-sized mattress pressed up against the wall underneath the window. It's quiet outside and it reminds her of home in enough ways that Kimberly doesn't have any problem falling into sleep's easy embrace. It had been seven hours of driving today and she thinks about Trini's profile against the sunlight coming in through the car windows as she drove. She thinks about how she looked in the darkness last night, hair spread out under her head across the blankets. Thinks about her sleeping a little ways away on that pull-out couch.

Wonders if maybe Trini is thinking of her, too.

She's just on the edge of sleep when the door creaks open, and she whips her head around to look, feeling her armor spike hot in her veins, itching to come out. And it's dark, but she knows who it is instantly. She'd know her anywhere, she imagines.

"Hey," she whispers as Trini shuts the door behind herself and tiptoes across the floorboards. "Are you okay?"

Kimberly pushes herself upright and presses back into the headboard of the bed, bunching the sheets around her waist and holding out a hand that Trini takes. She guides her to the bed and, when Trini sits down, rubs her hand up and down her back, tipping her chin to rest it on Trini's shoulder.

"Yeah," Trini says softly after a moment. She breathes deeply in through her mouth and Kimberly starts to pull away, to give her space. But then Trini says, "You're okay," and, "Stay," so she does.

"Nightmare?" Kimberly asks, because she's been there for Trini's nightmares in the past. The first month after Rita had been hard for all of them, but especially Trini who'd had the unfortunate pleasure of being Rita's first chew toy the night before they'd fought her. Billy was just as bad at times, but Jason was always the one to step in when it came to him. Trini had been left to her.

Not that she's complaining, or ever would. She likes being needed, even if the causation for her being needed makes her sick to her stomach at times. She'd felt so guilty after the attack. Trini had been across town, fighting for her life _alone_ while Kimberly had been in Jason's bedroom pouring her soul out about something that was her own fault.

It hasn't been easy to compromise, even after those times when Trini would tell her it wasn't her fault. It wasn't _anyone's_ other than Rita's.

"No," Trini says, and it's a little surprising because she's shaking like she's nervous.

Kimberly rubs her back through her t-shirt in small circles. "What's wrong?"

"I just…" She takes another shaky breath and then turns, forcing Kimberly to pull herself upright a little so that they can look at one another properly. "What happens when we go back?"

It's not a fully-formed question, but it's easy enough to understand what she's getting at.

"You mean...with us?" Kimberly asks.

Trini nods.

Her heart flutters a little at the idea of going back in more ways than one. She can't imagine returning to their simple friendship now that she knows what the other side looks like, feels like, _tastes_ like. There's a hollow feeling in her chest. She bites her lip so hard that she's surprised when she flicks her tongue against it once it's been released a moment later and doesn't taste blood.

"What do you want to happen?" she asks next, because she needs to know.

But she must have forgotten who it is that she's talking to. Trini doesn't do this sort of thing easily. Kimberly doesn't usually, either, but Trini is an entirely different ballpark. The first thing she'd done on their second meeting had been run away from her. This is no different.

"What do _you_?" Trini returns, sounding more and more anxious by the moment.

The air conditioning kicks on, making them both jump, and the curtains over the window flutter a little, letting in some moonlight. It hits the side of Trini's face in a way that makes it hard for Kimberly to remember how to breathe for a moment. Her back is warm under her hand and she draws a star with the tip of her forefinger, then a heart. Breathes in. Out.

"I don't know, Trini, I just…" She stops. Breathes. "I just...I don't want to go back to being like we were, you know? I think that I would...wait for you forever. But I don't know if I could stand it."

There's a moment of hesitation where Trini just looks at her and Kimberly just looks back. Like they're waiting for something, only they don't know what. Kimberly feels on display as Trini stares at her, and her heart is pounding furiously against her ribs, making her feel a little seasick from the force of it. Part of her wonders if she's said too much. Part of her thinks that she should take it back, make it _less_ somehow.

But then Trini says, "Oh, thank God," in this rush of air, leaning forward, and they're kissing and she's so glad she didn't.

Trini's fingers come up to thread through her hair, to bring her closer, and Kimberly feels powerless to do anything other than follow her lead. Her hands shake as she rests them on Trini's waist, pulling her forward, closer, sighing in Trini's mouth when she bites at her bottom lip and then smooths over it with her tongue. It makes her breathless, makes her groan, makes the room feel like it's on a tilt. Like she can't get enough or like the universe has finally, _finally_ given her a complete picture of what it is she's meant to be fighting for now.

She was right. She couldn't go back after this. There's no possible way.

"You don't have to wait," Trini whispers against her lips when they pull apart, her forehead warm as it rests against Kimberly's own. She has both of her hands threaded into her hair and they're breathing against each other and this is the closest they've ever been.

The closest, maybe, that Kimberly has ever been with _anyone_.

"Good," Kimberly says because there's nothing else for her to say. Nothing would be good enough. Not even that begins to cover it.

"Can I...I can leave if you want," Trini offers a few moments later. "For...sleeping and stuff."

It's a nice gesture, but it doesn't mean the same thing when she's practically straddling Kimberly's lap.

"Do you want to stay?" Kimberly asks, trying to sound braver than the question makes her feel. "Like...we can just sleep."

Trini laughs and pulls away a little, but her hands stay where they are. Her knee brushes against Kimberly's hip through the blankets. "I would hope so, Hart," she says. "We haven't even gone on a date yet."

"And yet I've already talked you into sleeping with me."

That earns her a shove on the arm that nearly has her smacking her head into the headboard as Trini pulls away and climbs under the covers beside her.

It's worth it.

.

Trini is still there when Kimberly wakes up the next morning, eyes closed against the bright sun coming in through the windows and the blanket draped over one-half of her face. Her hair is sticking up a little in the back and her leg is warm against Kimberly's thigh under the sheets.

She's barely been awake for a minute and the day is already turning out great.

After a minute, Trini stirs, stretching a little and then yawning as she opens her eyes and blinks in the morning light. Kimberly's phone is buzzing on the nightstand and Trini turns, frowning at it, before picking it up to shut off the alarm. She rolls back over.

"Hey," she says sleepily.

"Hey yourself."

"You have bed-head."

"You have morning breath."

And Trini laughs, her voice gravelly. "Like you mind," she says, leaning over to press a light kiss to Kimberly's lips and, yeah, okay. She's got a point.

She doesn't mind at all.

Trini is different in the morning. Kimberly isn't sure if she'll ever get used to it. Her eyes are bright and her smile wide and she's so warm under the covers, so much braver than she has been since they started this trip. She wraps her arms around Kimberly's waist and pulls her close, dotting kisses up her jaw to her nose and then nuzzling into her neck, soft and happy.

"It's only a few hours to Rockport," Kimberly says when the silence they've been laying in becomes too much, when she wants nothing more than to hear Trini's voice vibrate against her neck.

"Yeah," Trini whispers, breath tickling the curls resting against Kimberly's ear.

"We can take our time."

The idea of it seems foreign after the past few months. Time wasn't something they'd been given when they'd found those coins, then the ship, then Zordon, and been saddled with their responsibilities. Rita had come quickly, and after her was graduation, then more training. The constant worry that _something else_ would be here, soon. It feels like the sort of thing she'd be able to do only in another world, another life.

Definitely not this one.

"I'm starting to think we came all this way for nothing," Trini confesses, the words sounding lighter than they would, maybe, at any other time of day.

It's something to consider. There haven't been any lights that they've seen so far, though they've still a few hours to go before they reach where the majority of the sightings happen. Nothing besides paranoia and a few newspaper headlines have even given away the reason for this trip. She'd be relieved if she weren't so worried about stumbling upon something big, something worse than just two of them can handle.

Also--

"Not nothing," Kimberly corrects and when Trini tilts her head up, eyebrows furrowed in askance, she kisses her.

Not nothing indeed.

.

It's not normal for her, but Trini feels lighter when Kimberly kisses her, tells her that this whole trip wouldn't be for nothing. She doesn't like that thought, and something in her brain nags at her, reminds her that her self-worth is in things she can measure, battles she can win, that nothing has changed because she's not living on her own and none of her childhood dreams have come to fruition, and yes, she has a power coin, but she's still powerless--

She stops the spiral before it starts by pressing herself closer to Kimberly.

It'll be okay if this was for nothing because this is still something.

.

Steph is waiting for them in the kitchen when they emerge with a knowing smile and a plate stacked high with chocolate chip pancakes. She's wearing an apron with flowers dotting the edges and one glance into the living room confirms that she's already collapsed the pull-out that Trini left empty the night before.

"Sleep okay?" she asks, and Kimberly honestly hadn't known that Trini could turn that shade of pink.

.

It's warm outside, but not as dry as it is back home. Kimberly stands by the car while Trini hugs Steph goodbye on the doorstep. The hug lasts a while -- longer than Steph's one with her had -- and she can just hear them talking a little. A low conversation that she has no interest in overhearing.

The breeze shifts the leaves of the trees on the edge of the house. A car rumbles past, winking reflections from the sun against Steph's dark green mailbox at the edge of the driveway. Kimberly opens the driver's side door and stands in between it and the seat. Looks through the back window, takes inventory to make sure they haven't forgotten anything.

"Hey, ready to go?"

Trini's voice startles her, and when she looks up, she's standing on the other side of the car.

"Yeah," she says, and she gets in, closing the door behind her.

"It was nice to meet you!" Steph calls from the porch and Kimberly waves out her open window.

"You, too!" she calls, smiling. "Thank you so much!"

"Anytime. Make my niece visit more."

She turns her wave into a thumbs-up and then rolls her window shut.

Trini rolls her eyes as she latches her seatbelt but she's smiling. Kimberly pulls out of the driveway and turns them in the direction the GPS tells her to go. Turns them towards Rockport while Trini's hand finds hers, holds on, squeezes.

.

Steph is one of the few people Trini loves to hug, which is not something she'll ever admit out loud. Her aunt already knows it by the way Trini rests her head against her, sighs into the embrace just a little because it feels like a whole other world in here. For a moment, she can forget that her parents don't really talk to Steph anymore, and she can forget that there was ever a reason she had wanted to run away to Steph's house in the first place.

And, then, her aunt pulls away, and Trini is reminded that the real world exists.

"Call me if you need anything, okay?" Steph says to her, quietly, and Trini frowns a little, the corners of her lips turning down in disappointment.

"I can take care of myself," she responds, petulantly, feeling like it's a younger version of her mom standing in front of her, even though she knows that Steph isn't like that. Steph's always been on her side while the jury is constantly out on her mom.

"Hey, I know." Steph nudges her shoulder. "It's because I care about you. And I mean you on the inside, not just how you seem on the outside."

"Yeah." Trini spares a glance at Kimberly, who's pointedly giving them privacy by not looking in their direction. "I'm doing okay," she says. It's not a lie, and it's some kind of truth. Part of it, at least.

Steph follows Trini's gaze to Kimberly, and she doesn't ask out loud like Gia did but Trini sees the question in her eyes, anyway.

"I need to tell her," Trini murmurs in response, "I know. I will. Eventually."

"You don't have to," Steph amends, shrugging. "It's your choice, but she wouldn't hold it against you. I know she wouldn't."

Trini sighs, thinks about her fingers threading through Kimberly's hair, about how the thought of doing that doesn't scare her so much anymore. "I want to."

.

After three eight-hour (almost) days in a row, the final two hours go by so quickly that it feels like nothing at all. San Jose Island is in the way, so they're not looking out at the Gulf exactly when they stop pull up at a motel by the beach, but it's something.

Kimberly uses her credit card to pay for the room and Trini carries their bags up the steps to the second level. It's clean enough, bright. Two beds, a closet, a bathroom, a TV that's definitely seen better days. Trini sets their bags on the bed closest to the window and then sits down on the other one, patting the mattress beside her. Kimberly watches her, tries to remember how to breathe -- because Trini's hair is curling a little in the humidity and they fell asleep together last night, woke up together in the morning -- and then moves to sit beside her.

Trini kisses her, fingers curled around Kimberly's jaw, smiling against her lips, and it's so nice that she almost doesn't register her phone buzzing in her back pocket at first.

.

It's her mom. Of course it is. Finally.

"You're _where_?"

Her voice is sharp, harsh, and Kimberly leans against the railing outside the room. Closes her eyes.

"I'm in Texas, Mom. Not a fraudulent charge. It was me."

The conversation had started out simple -- _We'll need to shut down your card, honey. Someone's using it in someplace called Rockport?_

Now it's derailed.

"What on earth are you doing in Texas? Why wouldn't you tell me where you were going? Are you acting out again? Is this...some sort of...revenge? For whatever it is you think your father and I have done that deserves punishment."

And there it is. Always back to them.

Kimberly sighs. "No, Mom, it's not...I'm not acting out or whatever," she says, trying to keep her voice steady, calm. "I'm just...Trini and I wanted to go on a road trip and we did it. I thought I told you."

And, sure, it's a lie, but it's a victimless one. She hardly even registers saying it.

Her mom is silent for a moment, possibly weighing the pros and cons of trying to ground her only child when said child isn't even in the same state. After a moment, she hears her mom let out a breath.

"You're with Trini?" she asks.

Not quite what she'd been expecting, but, "Yes."

"And you're being safe?"

"Yeah, Mom."

Another sigh. "Okay. Just...just please don't go crazy with that card and...and if you ever want to go...gallivanting across the country again, please let me and your father know."

Something loosens in Kimberly's chest, making it easier to breathe, to move. She opens her eyes and blinks in the sun, looking down at the mostly-empty parking lot.

"I will. I promise."

"Alright." She pauses for a moment. "How long will you be gone?"

"I don't know. A few more days? I'll let you know."

Another pause. "I suppose I'll have to live with that, won't I?"

Kimberly doesn't answer. She's certain she's not meant to.

"Be safe, Kimberly. I love you."

"I love you, too, Mom. I will."

Her mom hangs up a moment later, the conversation over. Kimberly sags against the railing and shoves her phone into the back pocket of her shorts. It could have been worse. That much is obvious.

When she goes back into the room, Trini is chewing on her lip from her seat on the bed, pretending to watch the local news. Her eyes dart up, wide and panicked, when Kimberly comes in and shuts the door behind herself.

"I'm alive," Kimberly drawls. "Clearly."

"How mad was she?'

Kimberly laughs. "Less so than she was when she cut my hair."

And the fact that this isn't a lie is sort of crazy.

She crosses the room and flops back on the mattress. Trini looks down at her and brushes some of her hair out of her face. The mood has shifted, she thinks, but she can't understand what's changed exactly. It's better, though. Lighter.

Everything out in the open now.

.

Trini understands the tension in Kimberly's shoulders when she goes outside to take the phone call from her mom, but she also understands the relieving absence of it when Kimberly comes back. That'd been a lot of her and her mom's relationship -- push and pull, fighting each other, and eventually, Trini had learned that, yeah, she wasn't going to get to run away and start over somewhere else like she wanted to, but she could deal with where she was now by just chipping away at her parents' resolve. And, hey, they'd let her go on this road trip, so that's progress from where they would've been months ago. Maybe things will be different when she comes back home. Maybe the change she wanted was never meant to come all at once in a bright flash but slowly. Gradually. Baby steps like Gia had said.

She presses a kiss to Kimberly's cheek then nose. Rests their foreheads together and suggests, "Wanna head down to the beach? Get some fresh air, stretch our legs a bit?"

Kimberly nods and sighs, contentedly, "Yeah, that'd be nice."

.

That night, they wander outside once the sun has gone down. The majority of the sightings Billy told them about over the phone, just a few hours after they got settled in their motel room, happened at night, so the chances of seeing something are higher.

The beach is within walking distance, past a few touristy restaurants and shops and there are more people than Kimberly was expecting this late in the summer season. Still, it's nice to not be the only people out there.

They set up camp on the edge of the beach, on a bench near an empty bark. The water is still a good deal away, but they can see it churning a little in the darkness.

It had been cloudy in the last few hours of the day, the bright sky making way for dark clouds, though it hasn't rained. Now it's even darker, no clouds. The streetlamps and light from the restaurants nearby are enough for now, at least.

Kimberly curls an arm around the back of the bench, around Trini's shoulders, and turns up to look at the sky. There are a few people milling around, laughing, talking. The beach is still open, despite the darkness, and she can just see a lifeguard sitting on his elevated seat, peering out into the darkness. What looks like it might be a small carnival is a good bit away, it's lights bright against the sky. How they missed it before this moment, she doesn't know, but it explains why there so many people nearby.

"What are we supposed to do if we find something?" Trini asks, and Kimberly doesn't have an answer for that.

"Excellent question," she says.

It's silence after that, nice and easy. Trini leans into her side.

.

Eventually -- after an hour of nothing -- they get up and wander down the boardwalk, following the families and young people that are turned towards whatever tiny fair it is they have set up. Not a fair exactly, she sees when they get close. But two separate spinning rides. Three booths with those games that she's pretty sure are rigged. A sign out front boasting that all proceeds go to benefit the local community center.

 _Summer Beach Bash_ is painted across the banner above the main entrance, taped up between two fake-bamboo poles that have been hammered into the soft ground. Kimberly is eying the game booth with bags of goldfish as prices and trying to decide if there'd be a way to drive twenty hours with a goldfish and have it _survive,_ when Trini grabs her hand and squeezes.

She turns to look at her and finds Trini looking up at the night sky, instead and follows her line of sight. Above the churning, dark sea is a cluster of bright-orange light shaped almost like a jellyfish. They flash once, then twice, then a third time and flicker out, reappearing a little ways further off.

"Is that what we're looking for?" Trini asks, her voice pitched low and she's still gripping Kimberly's wrist.

"Yeah," Kimberly says. "Yeah, I think so."

They're not the only ones who have stopped to look. In fact, the majority of the people around them have also stopped, looking up at the now empty sky where the lights just were with varying degrees of confusion on their faces. After a moment, a few of them start walking, a buzzing hum of excitement in their conversation as they question what they just saw, jostling past Trini and Kimberly to get to one of the spinning rides behind them.

There's a woman nearby, sitting in a metal chair by the entrance to the small fair. She has a roll of tickets on her lap and a large plastic jar in her hands with cash inside of it. She has her gray hair pulled back away from her face and she looks away from the sky without the same look of amazement everyone else seemed to have.

Kimberly pulls away from Trini and takes a few steps closer to the woman. "Excuse me," she begins, and the woman looks up. "Those lights in the sky. Have they happened before?"

What she's expecting is the woman to begin rambling on about U.F.O.'s and all sorts of things that she, herself, would have thought to be completely bogus six months ago. Instead, the woman just smiles and nods, not looking bothered in the slightest.

"Oh, yes," she says. "We've been having storms like crazy the past few weeks. Hurricane season you know."

She says it like Kimberly is meant to understand what that has to do with anything.

"Okay," she says softly, dragging the word out a little in her blatant confusion.

Trini is standing beside her now, their shoulders brushing a little.

The woman smiles. "It's only lightning," she tells them. "Little sprites up in the sky. From the electrical discharge, you know." She pauses to let this sink in. "But it sure has made folks around here jumpy, what with what happened over in California in October. Everyone is expecting some sort of alien invasion. It's amazing, the things you can see when you're looking for reasons to be scared."

Kimberly turns to look at Trini, who's expression, she's sure, must mirror her own.

Could it really be that simple?

Could that be all there is to it?

Just weird lightning in the sky, making people imagine all sorts of things?

"Oh," Trini says softly, breathing the word more than saying it. "Oh."

Kimberly turns back to the woman. "Okay. Thank you." It's meant to sound polite and relieved, but it comes out rushed.

The woman doesn't seem to mind, either way, and Kimberly tugs out her wallet from her back pocket, fishing out a few dollars. "How much are tickets?" she asks and the woman keeps on smiling.

.

She calls Jason from beyond the fair entrance and tells him. He's silent for a long time on the other end, noise from behind him. The TV. A movie maybe. She thinks she can hear Zack's voice and maybe Jason's sister, Pearl.

The whole thing feels far away, especially as she looks over at Trini who is still looking up at the sky with her arms crossed. It's cooled off a little and there'd been a few telling rumbles of thunder. Everything feels detached and far away. She reaches out a hand and is thankful when Trini takes it, anchoring her in place.

"Are you sure?" he asks.

Because it can't be that easy. They'd come here sort of expecting a fight. Or...or something else. But now--

"I don't know," Kimberly tells him. "We'll stick around for another day, but...I think it might be that easy. It's like the whole _War of the Worlds_ panic thing when it got broadcast on the radio in the 30's, maybe. Not the actual panic, but the fact that there really _wasn't_ a panic and newspapers blew the whole thing out of proportion."

They'd learned about that in English class back in Freshman year. Jason had been in the back of her class and they hadn't been friends then, but they'd been friendly enough to pair up for a worksheet or two.

He's silent again for another long moment. "Oh, yeah," he says. "Yeah. Maybe."

Trini looks at her and frowns. Mouths, "What's he saying?" and gets a shrug in return.

"Okay, um...I'll talk to Billy and we'll...we'll do more research. Just keep your eyes open. If you don't see anything substantial, though, I guess...come home."

And Jason has never been one to give up. But maybe that's not what this is. She doesn't think it is anyway.

"Okay," she says easily. "I'll let you know."

She hangs up a moment later.

"What was that you said about it being a waste of time earlier?" she asks and Trini smiles, dimples and wide.

"Oh, that?" she says, her voice pitched high and easy. "I think I was wrong about that."

Her fingers lace in between Kimberly's and they're close and this newness buzzes between them. They're still changing and growing and figuring out what all of this means and can be and the whole thing is dizzying, really. Almost like she can't keep up.

"I think so, too," Kimberly tells her, and now they're talking about something else entirely.

Something inside of her has cracked wide open in a way that leaves her feeling bigger than her skin, bigger than anything she's ever been before. Trini's hand is warm, her eyes bright under the lights of the carnival.

"Well, now what?" she asks next and Trini bites her lip, thinks it over.

For a moment, there's a chance for them to be serious, to say something pertaining to this entire trip. But it passes quickly and then it's just the two of them, standing there and holding hands and waiting for something to give.

"Now I convince you to be my girlfriend," Trini says easily and she's still biting her lip, like she's trying to keep from laughing.

Kimberly quirks an eyebrow. She hums. "I don't know. I might need some convincing."

"Good thing I prepared a list of convincing arguments then."

"You did?"

Trini nods.

"Fire away, then."

Trini grins and rocks forward on her tiptoes, pressing her lips to Kimberly's quickly. "That's one," she says when she pulls away. "The others might need to wait for somewhere more private."

Kimberly laughs, her lips tingling still from the contact. "I like them already."

"I knew you were easy."

She whacks Trini's shoulder playfully. "What would you rather? Me being hard?"

Trini wiggles her eyebrows at that and then they're both laughing, like they can't stop.

Thunder rumbles in the distance again and she can hear the waves on the sand. People laughing. Conversations. Music. Bugs in the grass, in the bushes, in the trees. It's the first time in five months that she's felt this light. For a moment, she's convinced she's dreaming, because nothing has been this easy so far. Nothing has been so simple.

"Come on," Trini says when she's stopped laughing, tugging on Kimberly's wrist and leading her towards one of the game booths. "Let me spend too much money to win you a cheap teddy bear."

And, well, Kimberly can't exactly argue against that even if she wanted to.

.

She says, "I think I was wrong about that," nervous and barely holding on, and Kimberly hears casualness instead. For Kimberly's sake, Trini puts up a front for the rest of the night because it makes sense to. There's tension in her bones, a kind of disappointment that it's just weather, angry at herself because she knows it'd be infinitely more worse and dangerous for it to be actual aliens but she kind of wishes it were. Wishes there was something to actually worry over instead of nothing. At least it's not weather balloons, but.

And she hates to go back on her word when Kimberly had told her this hadn't been for nothing already, but the ease she'd felt had been a lie, too. All of this, all of her security, all of her nonchalance.

She settles into Kimberly's side that night, sighs to herself, and decides: she'll tell her in the morning.

.

By the time the sunlight peeking through the curtains wakes Kimberly up, Trini is already awake, sitting up in bed, holding her stuffed stark and scratching her fingers along the indentations of plush gills.

"Morning," Kimberly mumbles, reaching out for her.

Trini takes her hand and sighs, not a bad sigh, just weary. "Hey."

Kimberly rubs her eyes and half sits up, propping herself up on one elbow. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah, yeah," Trini answers in a way that doesn't even sound convincing to herself so probably wouldn't to Kimberly, either, "I just… I need to talk to you."

"Um, okay," Kimberly says, slowly, and Trini can see her brow furrow in concern or, perhaps, fear.

"It's nothing bad. I promise." At least, she hopes. "It's just… something I haven't shared with you for awhile, and I want to now."

Kimberly pauses for a moment. "Does it have to do with what you told me the other night? About Gia and Emma helping you through something?"

Trini nods. "Yeah."

"You don't have to tell me if you're not ready to," Kimberly says, softly.

"No, I want to," she responds, firmly, half to answer Kimberly and half to reinforce herself so that she doesn't chicken out.

"Okay." Kimberly nods. And waits.

"It's just… the lights," she starts, "They got me thinking about how we came all this way and it wasn't what we thought it was. My whole life has kinda been like that -- getting myself worked up over things that, ultimately, I'd blown out of proportion. I… I get scared easily. Anxious, worried about small things, big things, whatever. Everything, sometimes."

She sets the shark aside so she can lean over the bed and fumble for her backpack that she purposefully left next to the bed the night before. Pulls out her medicine bottle and shows it to Kimberly, shakes it but it doesn't rattle because she has the cotton ball stuffed inside of it still. Trini had packed more than enough doses for the trip, of course, because she knew to be prepared. "This is Zoloft. I take a pill once everyday. Usually when you're not looking," she explains, and it feels like a dirty secret she's revealing but it's not. It's her business, her past that she's choosing to let Kimberly in on. It still feels wrong, though, leaves her skin tingling. "It's for…" she pauses, swallows, "It's for my OCD."

Trini lets it sit there in the air for a moment, to let it sink in for Kimberly. But Kimberly must sense she has more to say because she doesn't open her mouth to respond.

She continues, setting the bottle on the bedside table. "It's not… terrible anymore. Manageable on most days. But I… I had a breakdown in high school when I still lived in Phoenix, and that was when I was friends with Gia and Emma and some others. I couldn't handle it at first and did some really, um, stupid things like… playing around with my parents' medicine cabinet and other stuff." Trini sighs, runs a hand through her hair, then puts her hands in her lap and keeps them there. "I was scared, and I didn't know what to do. Didn't wanna get close to my parents because I felt like they wouldn't understand me 'cause I had other stuff going on, too, and I didn't wanna go to my friends because, I don't know, I thought I'd lose them." She clears her throat, gives herself a moment to relax before it gets too hard to lay everything out on the table. Well, the bedsheets. "I… I let it get too bad before I reached out for anyone.

"When I ran from you guys," Trini continues, bunching up the sheets underneath her fingers because it's better than bringing them up to her scalp, "I did it because I was scared. I didn't want to be part of any weird shit because it'd just mean more that could set me off or… I don't know, stuff for me to deal with. But I'm glad I stayed."

Pausing, she corrects herself, "Sorry, I mean, I'm glad you threw me off of a cliff." Then laughs. It helps break up the tension when Kimberly chuckles, too, more at ease when she sees that Trini's genuinely laughing instead of being wound up and tense.

Reaching out, she holds her palm up, waiting for Kimberly to link their hands together. "I love being a Ranger," Trini admits, "Being a part of something _good_ like this, you know? I mean, I… I spent a lot of time worried about these lights and now that it's just… science, I do kinda feel weird, but like…" She shrugs, brings Kimberly's hand up to where she can lightly brush her lips against Kimberly's knuckles. "It's okay that we drove all this way because… it ended up being for us and… I love you."

A shudder runs through her the moment the words leave her mouth, and Trini pauses. Confirms to herself that she means it without doubt, repeats it. "I love you, Kim," she says, earnestly.

.

Kimberly is quiet for a long moment, looking at Trini, sitting there across the bed from her, Kimberly's hand near her mouth. She wonders at how hard that must have been for her to share, how much easier it would have been for Trini to not tell her. If that would have been easier, or if secrecy itself would prove to be more difficult. But it doesn't matter, either way, because she _told_ her. She _trusted_ her. Trini opened the door to her darkest closet and flipped the light on so that Kimberly could see inside because, at some point, she decided that it would be worth it.

She feels like everything is buzzing with some new electricity, at some new frequency. Like she could get up and not stop moving, run without end, without hunger, without exhaustion. But she doesn't, of course. She stays where she is. She squeezes Trini's hand.

"I love you, too," she breathes, the words ghosting past her lips and lingering in the air between them. There's nothing else she can say. Nothing to add.

All of the sudden, it just _is_.

This is how she's fallen in love with Trini. Without any halts or breaks or safety nets waiting below. She doesn't think it'll ever stop.

.

Jason calls them and tells them to come home. Trini packs and shoves her beanie at the very bottom because she knows she won't need it for awhile. It's not all entirely out there, her past for Kimberly, but that'll come in time, and she'll sit the boys down eventually and talk to them, too. Maybe talk to Billy privately in addition because she'd held herself back from letting him know that she understood him and he understood her without knowing. But, for now, this is enough, Kimberly knowing is enough, and Kimberly being with her is more than enough.

She sets her playlist to the highest volume possible where they can still hear each other -- but also sing at the top of their lungs because she deserves it. Because they deserve it. Pulls out her phone and takes a picture of Kimberly in the driver's seat, posts it on SnapChat and sends it to Kimberly privately, too, watching the number tick up on their streak.

Captions it with: _couldn't have asked for a better road trip partner <3 _

"Gross," Kimberly mutters without looking at her phone that buzzes just then, "Did you take a picture of me?"

Trini shrugs and grins, teasingly. "Maybe."

.

The windows are open, wind whipping in to brush their hair away from their faces. Three days there, they'd said. Three days there, three days back.

But Kimberly thinks the boys would be okay without them if it took them a little longer getting back.

They have all the time in the world.

...

**Author's Note:**

> title from Surrender - WALK THE MOON (this entire fic is sponsored by WTM tbh)
> 
> \--
> 
> featuring: andy (andawaywego) writing as kimberly and ryan (hearden) writing as trini


End file.
